Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues
The vaccine manufacturer Roche on Wednesday announced a program to help ensure developing countries have access to its antiviral Tamiflu, for “the management of a novel influenza strain defined by the WHO as having significant and current pandemic potential,” Reuters reports.
Within the next few days, the WHO “will recommend that countries stop trying to test all suspected cases of swine flu, said Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s assistant director-general of health security and environment,” Tuesday during a conference call with reporters, Bloomberg reports.
The worldwide death toll from the H1N1 (swine flu) virus has doubled in the past month, reaching over 700, the WHO announced Tuesday, the AP/Google.com reports.
The race to develop a H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine before the fall flu season ramped up Wednesday, after Australia launched the first human trials of the H1N1 vaccine and scientists from the U.S., China and Britain announced plans for human trials of an H1N1 vaccine in the coming weeks, AFP/France24.com reports.
Efforts to fast-track the approval of H1N1 (swine) flu vaccines will not compromise the safety or quality controls of vaccine production, the WHO said in a written statement Thursday, the Mail & Guardian reports.
President Obama together with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper “vowed on Monday to fight the spread of the H1N1 swine flu,” during their summit in Guadalajara, Mexico, Reuters reports.
“GlaxoSmithKline has started testing its pandemic H1N1 swine flu vaccine in humans, and expects to start giving the results to government agencies next month, the drug maker said on Friday,” Reuters reports.
Beginning on Thursday, “Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, will shut schools and movie theaters as swine flu-related deaths jumped, ignoring federal government advice to keep educational institutions open,” Bloomberg reports.
Heavy Rains Worsen Health Conditions For IDPs In Sri Lanka “Heavy rains exacerbated poor conditions for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) in northern Sri Lanka over the weekend,” IRIN reports. “From an epidemiological point of view, this is a public health disaster waiting to happen,” an international…
According to the latest WHO report out Wednesday, the number of confirmed H1N1 (swine) flu deaths since its emergence in April has reached 1,799 – a jump from 1,462 deaths since the agency’s last update, Agence France-Presse/the Australian reports.