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Proposals:

2001

Netesov, Sergey V.; Sandakhchiev, Lev S.The Need for Creation of the International Center in Novosibirsk, Russia for Combating Infections Diseases and Bioterrorism Threat in Asia.”  STATE RESEARCH CENTER OF VIROLOGY AND BIOTECHNOLOGY NOVOSIBIRSK (RUSSIA), Sep. 2001 pp 349-357.

  1. “In 1992, an International Science and Technology Center (ISTC)was established as a nonproliferation-targeted program for the Newly Independent States.”  p 350
  2. “VECTOR employees have attended dozens of international conferences and workshops using ISTC Support.  Hundreds of our scientists have visited their foreign counterparts on site.  It made it possible to create an atmosphere of openness and transparency at VECTOR, which is critical to science and scientists.”  p 350
  3. “…with BTEP it is the study of infections representing serious public health problems such as HIV/AIDS, multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, hepatitis, measles, etc.  And these investigations are being started with establishing the international ethical standards at VECTOR in accordance with international GCP regulations. p 350
  4. “Two very perspective projects will be started soon in the field of development of fast and very sensitive PCR-microchip detection of dangerous pathogen genomes in blood and other biological samples.” p 350
  5. “Very focused are also the efforts that are being planned and implemented under U.S.A.  Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program that relate to upgrade the physical security and biosafety systems at the maximum biocontainment facilities at VECTOR up to the highest modern standards.”  p 351
  6. “Continuous involvement of foreign scientists in work at this ”Center”would be a powerful instrument of confidence building.  It is critical, therefore, that all high containment capabilities and necessary supporting facilities be incorporated into the ”Center” to alleviate concerns over possible prohibited activity.”  p 351
  7. “The geographical location of the Center – near the geographical center of Russia – is very suitable for the most effective collection of natural viral and bacterial strains and diagnostic procedures for the study of specimens from Asian Russia, Central Asia FSU republics, Mongolia and other neighbor countries, if needed because Novosibirsk is the largest in the area transportation hub.  this location of the proposed ”International Center” would also allow us to join international efforts to control and deter potential bioterrorists.”  p 352
  8. “The Collection of Cultures of Microorganisms available in the Center comprises over 10,000 deposit entries: various viral strains, including the national collection of variola virus strains and strains of viral BSL-4 pathogens.”  p 352
  9. VECTOR houses one of the two WHO Collaborating Centers (WHO Collaborating Center for orthopoxvirus diagnosis and repository for variola virus strains and DNA), supplied with all required conditions for work with human highly pathogenic viruses including variola virus.”  pp 352-353
  10. “As a result of this research, the proposed ”International Center” can have one of its strategic scientific goals such as making prognosis, based on the data of global monitoring, of what new infections might emerge in the future.  It should be noticed that the most of these infectious agents are considered to be possible bioterrorism agents, and therefore the proposed ICERID could develop the preventive research in anti-bioterrorism direction.”  p 353
  11. “The special attention would be paid to the investigation of the unusual outbreaks of infectious diseases in the region (Asian part of Russia, Central Asian republics – members of C.I.S., possibly – another countries of the region).  This investigation may be conducted using molecular epidemiology approach, which allows to determine the sero- and genotypes of infectious agents, the source of primary infection and even to help distinguishing whether it is intentional or natural outbreak … Such investigations may be made on a regular basis for a wide list of pathogens.  This type of research would be extremely useful both for monitoring of the evolution and spread of infectious agents and for the investigation of possible bioterrorism cases.”  pp 353-354

Russia, Bioterrorism, Biodefense, Biodetection, Lab Safety, Mongolia, Scientist, WHO

 2002

Powers, Michael and Ban, Jonathan, “Bioterrorism: Threat and Preparedness“, National Academy of Engineering. Spring 2002 http://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge/EngineeringandHomelandSecurity/BioterrorismThreatandPreparedness.aspx

  1. Therefore, rather than planning for a narrow range of least-likely, high-consequence contingencies or focusing only on additional mailborne anthrax attacks, we must plan for a variety of future incidents–including incidents that cause mass casualties and mass disruption.”
  2.  “The incidents aroused significant fear and disruptions but not mass casualties. Based on these attacks, some analysts have suggested that terrorists would not be able to orchestrate mass-casualty attacks using biological weapons. Others have considered these attacks as demonstrations of terrorists’ ability to acquire high-quality anthrax”
  3.  “Rather than focusing on vulnerability to a particular organism or looking to history to determine what is to come, policy makers and scientists must recognize that the bioterrorist threat is not uni-dimensional. We must consider four key elements of the threat: the who (the actor), the what (the agent), the where (the target), and the how (the mode of attack).”
  4.  “We do not know how “massive” an attack would have to be to overwhelm the response system, instill fear and panic, or cause serious political or economic fallout.”
    “Every dollar spent preparing for a specific agent, such as building stocks of smallpox or anthrax vaccine or purchasing antidote for botulinum toxin, is a dollar that cannot be spent on preparedness for other organisms.
  5. Given the variety of combinations among actors, agents, targets, and dissemination techniques, a public health system must be capable of rapidly and accurately detecting and assessing a large number of bioterrorism scenarios and addressing most contingencies.”
  6.  “planning should be based on developing the capability of effectively and efficiently responding to a variety of bioterrorist contingencies”
  7.  “We must strike a better balance between hedging our defenses against high-end, mass-casualty events and building a “system of systems” capable of addressing both a wider range of bioterrorist contingencies and natural outbreaks of infectious disease.”
  8.  “In addition, accurate and timely information will be the backbone of the decision making process in times of crisis and will provide credible and consistent information to the general public to reduce panic.”
  9.  “A national surveillance system to provide an early warning of unusual outbreaks of disease, both natural and intentional, will be a critical component of our preparedness. This system will depend on an information infrastructure that includes electronic data networks connecting local public health departments and area health care providers and providing regular analyses of the data for the presence of unusual trends that could indicate a bioterrorist attack”

Public Health, Bioterrorism, WHO, Emergency Response, Smallpox, Anthrax

2004

MacKenzie, Debora, “Experts Fear Escape of 1918 Flu from LabNew Scientist, October 21, 2004. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6554-experts-fear-escape-of-1918-flu-from-lab.html

  1. “‘The potential implications of an infected lab worker – and spread beyond the lab – are terrifying,’ says D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading biosecurity expert.”
  2. “‘All the virologists I have spoken to have concerns,” says Ingegerd Kallings of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control in Stockholm, who helped set laboratory safety standards for the World Health Organization.'”
  3. “Kallings and others are calling for international discussions to resolve the issues related to such work. ‘It is time for influenza scientists to find a consensus on containment,’ she says. John MacKenzie of the University of Queensland in Australia, who investigated how the SARS virus escaped from high-level containment labs in east Asia on three occasions after lab workers became infected, agrees. ‘A meeting would be beneficial.'”
  4. “The team started the work at the highest level of containment, BSL-4, at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Then they decided the viruses were safe enough to handle at the next level down, and did the rest of the work across the border in a BSL-3Ag lab in Madison.”
  5. “The main difference between BSL-4 and BSL-3Ag is that precautions to ensure staff do not get infected are less stringent: while BSL-4 involves wearing fully enclosed body suits, those working at BSL-3Ag labs typically have half-suits.”
  6. “Kawaoka told New Scientist that the decision to move down to BSL-3Ag was taken only after experiments at BSL-4 showed that giving mice the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in advance prevented them getting sick. This means, he says, that if all lab workers take oseltamivir ‘they cannot become infected’.”
  7. “Terrence Tumpey’s team at the US Department of Agriculture’s poultry research lab in Athens, Georgia, got quite different results: they found that mice given oseltamivir still got sick and 1 in 10 died. It is not clear why Kawaoka’s mice fared better.”
  8. “Yet Kawaoka’s decision does comply with the US National Institutes of Health guidelines for BSL-3 agents: those causing ‘serious or lethal human disease for which preventive or therapeutic interventions may be [its italics] available.'”
  9. “By contrast, the team in Georgia, the first to experiment with genetically engineered 1918 viruses, did all its work at BSL-3Ag. Meanwhile, Michael Katze at the University of Washington at Seattle is planning to expose monkeys to aerosols of 1918-type viruses at BSL-3, a step down from BSL-3Ag. The recent SARS escapes were from BSL-3 labs.”
  10. “‘We would have to do any such work at BSL-4,’ says John Wood of the UK’s National Institute for Biological Standards and Control. In the US, the differing standards applied by different groups are due to the fact that experiments on engineered viruses such as the 1918 flu are approved on a case-by-case basis by Institutional Biosafety Committees (IBCs), composed of local scientists and officials. Critics say these are free to interpret the official guidelines in a way that suits them.”
  11. “‘There is no effective national system to ensure consistency, responsibility and good judgement in such research,’ says Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a biosecurity pressure group in Austin, Texas. In a review of IBCs published this month, he found that many would not provide minutes of recent meetings as required by law.”
  12. “He [Hammond] says the IBC that approved the planned 1918 flu study at the University of Washington considered only one scenario that could result in workers being exposed to airborne virus – the dropping of samples. Its solution: lab workers ‘will be trained to stop breathing'”

BSL, Lab Safety, Flu, Canada, U.K., WHO, SARS, Asia, Academia

2005

International Health Regulations (2005). http://www.who.int/csr/ihr/WHA58-en.pdf  Part II, Art. 5.1,

  1. “Each State Party shall assess events occurring within its territory by using the decision instrument in Annex 2. Each State Party shall notify WHO, by the most efficient means of communication available, by way of the National IHR Focal Point, and within 24 hours of assessment of public health information, of all events which may constitute a public health emergency of international concern within its territory in accordance with the decision instrument, as well as any health measure implemented in response to those events.”

Biosurveillance, WHO

 

International Health Regulations, WHO, 2005, 2nd Edition. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2008/9789241580410_eng.pdf

  1. to provide support to developing countries and countries with economies in transition if
    they so request in the building, strengthening and maintenance of the public health capacities
    required under the International Health Regulations (2005)
  2. to collaborate with States Parties to the extent possible in the mobilization of financial
    resources to provide support to developing countries in building, strengthening and maintaining
    the capacities required under the International Health Regulations (2005)
  3. The Director-General shall select the members of the Review Committee on the basis of the
    principles of equitable geographical representation, gender balance, a balance of experts from
    developed and developing countries, representation of a diversity of scientific opinion, approaches and
    practical experience in various parts of the world, and an appropriate interdisciplinary balance.

Public Health, Developing Countries, WHO

 

Olowokure, B. et al., “Global Surveillance for Chemical Incidents of International Public Health ConcernBulletin of the World Health Organization, 7 pages. December 2005.

  1. “This report describes the frequency, nature and geographical location of acute chemical incidents of potential international concern from August 2002 to December 2003” – page 928
  2. “In December 2001, an expert consultation convened by WHO identified strengthening national and global chemical incident preparedness and response as a priority” – page 928
  3. “The international community, through the World Health Assembly, has recognized the need to strengthen surveillance for chemical incidents. There are three main reasons for doing this.” – page 928
  4. “First, the continuing rapid growth and globalization of the chemicals industry means that chemical incidents will continue to be a problem.” – page 928
  5. “Second, chemical incidents may have an impact beyond their original location, in some cases crossing national borders.” – page 928
  6. “Third, there is concern regarding the deliberate use of chemicals for terrorist purposes, engendered by events such as the use of sarin on the Tokyo underground system and reports of the threatened use of ricin” – page 928
  7. “On a daily basis, information from a range of informal and formal sources was reviewed to identify acute chemical incidents and outbreaks of disease of unknown etiology that might be of chemical origin.” – page 929
  8. “The principal informal sources were the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), ProMED-Mail, and Hazard Intelligence (HInt)… all three had international scope” – page 929
  9. “Formal information sources included reports from national authorities, WHO offices, WHO Collaborating Centres and other United Nations agencies. ChemiNet and the communicable disease outbreak verification teams were additional sources, the latter particularly for diseases of unknown etiology that might be linked with chemicals.” – page 929
  10. “Each identified event was assessed against International Health Regulations (IHR) criteria … by the chemical alert and response team. If an event was deemed to be of potential international importance, WHO regional and country offices were contacted to obtain additional information, including official verification of the event…. Once verified, and depending on the nature of the event, a decision was taken about the need for a response.” – page 931
  11. “Such a response might include laboratory support (e.g. identification of a laboratory to carry out analyses, arranging supply of an analytical standard), on-site epidemiological assistance (e.g. assistance with investigation, control measures) or the provision of technical information.” – page 931
  12. “From 1 August 2002 to 31 December 2003, 779 chemical events were evaluated and 35 (4.5%) events of potential or actual international public health importance were identified in 26 countries” – page 931
  13. “…most chemical events tend to be localized, in contrast to communicable diseases, which are readily spread around the world by human or animal carriers.” – page 932

WHO, Chemical, Chemical Surveillance, Public Health, Emergency Response

2008

Garoon, Joshua P., Duggan, Patrick S., “Discourses of disease, discourses of disadvantage: A critical analysis of National Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plans,” Social Science & Medicine, 67, 2008 1133–1142.

  1. “The threat of pandemic influenza to global health has led to increased emphasis on pandemic influenza preparedness planning. Previous analysis of national pandemic preparedness plans has revealed that those plans paid scant attention to the needs and interests of the disadvantaged. This paper investigates those findings via critical discourse analysis of the same plans as well as World Health Organization guidance documents. The analysis reveals that the texts operate within and as parts of an ordered universe of discourse.Unless the plans recognize their discursive construction,implementation of the policies and practices they prescribe runs the risk of further disadvantaging those very populations most likely to require protection.

Flu, WHO, Pandemic

2009

Collin, Nicolas, de Radiguès, Xavier, “Vaccine production capacity for seasonal and Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza,” Vaccine 27 (2009) 5184–5186.

  1. the World Health Organization H1N1 Vaccine Task Force
  2. “WHO carried out a survey in May 2009 among influenza vaccine manufacturers on their planned seasonal and pandemic production with a view to developing recommendations on the distribution and use of pandemic influenza vaccine.”
  3. “The potential output of 4.9 B doses of pandemic vaccine per year reported in the present survey is a best-case scenario.”
  4. “the WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, and the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, met with senior officials of vaccine manufacturers on 19 May to ask them to reserve part of their production capacity for poor countries with no or little access to pandemic vaccine”

Flu, Vaccination, WHO, Pandemic

 

McNeil, Donald G. “New Advice on Swine Flu Doses for Pregnant Women,” NYT, A16, Nov. 3, 2009.

  1. “One dose of swine flu vaccine protects pregnant women against the flu, but children under 10 still need two doses, federal officials said Monday announcing further results of clinical trials of the vaccine.”
  2. “The officials also announced the formation of a panel of experts from outside the government to watch for any rare or unexpected side effects as millions of Americans get vaccinated.”
  3. “The World Health Organization last week recommended one dose of vaccine for all children, but the United States is ignoring that advice. The organization’s primary goal is to make sure that the world’s vaccine supplies stretch as far as possible among the world’s children. It endorses vaccine-stretching adjuvants and favors one dose per child so more children can get one.”
  4. “[Federal officials in the US] decided not to use adjuvants, even though they think they are safe, because anti-vaccine lobbyists have campaigned against them, calling them dangerous, and some officials feared that some Americans would be scared away from being vaccinated.”
  5. “Most European countries and Canada use vaccines with adjuvants, which are usually mixtures of water and oil that, for unknown reasons, increase the immune response and make smaller doses of vaccine work better.”

WHO, Vaccination, Flu

 

McNeil, Donald, G., “Nation Is Facing Vaccine Shortage For Seasonal Flu: An Increase in Demand,” NYT, A1, Nov. 5, 2009.

  1. “The current problems began years ago, experts said, when vaccine companies started abandoning the American market. Vaccines, which involve living viruses, are much harder to make than most drugs. Profits are lower and unused flu vaccine expires after a few months. Also, vaccines are primarily intended for children, and Americans frequently sue when a child is injured.”
  2. “Little was done to lure companies back until bioterrorism fears emerged after the anthrax attacks of 2001 and H5N1 avian flu virus, which kills about 60 percent of humans infected with it, emerged in 2003, Dr. Fauci said.”
  3. “The drawback of relying on foreign plants was made clear recently when the Australian government pressured CSL to keep its vaccine at home instead of fulfilling its contract for 36 million doses of swine flu vaccine for the United States.”
  4. “Although the government itself ordered and paid for all this year’s swine flu vaccine, about 90 percent of each year’s seasonal vaccine is made for the private sector.”
  5. “They [vaccine makers] are under pressure to make more to donate or sell to the World health Organization. Even optimistic predictions say the world’s poorest countries will get only 10 percent of the vaccine they need by winter’s end.”

Vaccination, Flu, Australia, WHO, Developing Countries

 

Wong, Edward, “China’s Tough Policy Seems to Slow Swine Flu,” NYT, A 1, Nov. 12, 2009.

  1. “Quarantines and medical detentions are among the aggressive measures that Chinese officials have taken to slow the transmission of H1N1.”
  2. “Local authorities canceled school classes at the slightest hint of the disease and ordered students and teachers to stay home.”
  3. “Now, Chinese and foreign health officials say that some of those contested measures — more easily adopted by an authoritarian state — may have helped slow the spread of the disease in the world’s most populous country.”
  4. “The United States Embassy in Beijing said that 2,046 American citizens had been quarantined by the end of October, with 215 testing positive for H1N1.”
  5. “But Mr. Feng and Dr. O’Leary also say that the social and financial cots of China’s tough measures will have to be evaluated to see whether they were worth the benefits.”
  6. “From the beginning, the W.H.O. has said that tightening borders would not keep the disease out, and that closing borders or automatically quarantining specific groups of travelers — as China did for a brief period with holders of Mexican passports — would have no benefit.”
  7. “The State Department implicitly criticized the Chinese policies by issusing travel warnings on the quarantine procedures.”

Quarantine, Flu, China, WHO, State Department, Mexico

 

Belluck, Pam, “Nations Hit by Swine Flu Getting Emergency Drugs,” NYT A11, Nov. 13, 2009.

  1. “Emergency supplies of antiviral drugs are being sent to Ukraine, Afganistan and other countries in Eastern Europe and Cental Asia, where hospitals report that they are being overwhelmed by patients with swine flu, the World Health Organization said Thursday.”
  2. “The agancy [WHO] said it was revising its guidelines and urging more people to take antiviral medication even before they are sure they have the flu.”
  3. “the agency was not yet confident, as it is now, about the safety and efficacy of the antivirals, Tamiflu and Relenza.  Doctors there were also worried about shortages.”
  4. “The agency said the countries most affected were Afganistan, Mongolia, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan.”
  5. “When the authorities in Lviv, in western Ukraine, officially connected the deaths to swine flu and called for quarantine measures, frightened residents began buying up masks, prices of home remedies like garlic and lemon shot up and ambulance calls increased fivefold.”

Flu, Vaccination, WHO, Quarantine, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan

2010

McNeill, Donald, G., “Transfers of Surplus Flu Vaccine Are Going Slowly to Countries That Need It,” NYT, A15, February 2, 2010.

  1. “There is now so much unused swine flu vaccine in the world that rich nations, including the United States, are trying to get rid of their surpluses.”
  2. “…95 countries that told the World Health Organization last year that tehy had no means of getting flu vaccine…”
  3. “… countries that can afford vaccines save themselves first and, when the worst has passed, transfer their leftovers to the poor, using the W.H.O. as a clearinghouse. …’it’s a very complex operation.’”
  4. “Each country must submit a plan proving it can store and refrigerate vaccine, give it to those who need it most, inject it safely and do medical follow-up.  It must also sign letters exempting donors from legal liability, and the W.H.O. has to certify the vaccine as safe if the country has no regulatory agency.”
  5. “Bill Gates … dismissed flu vaccine shipments a ‘a pipe dream.’  ‘It’s not practical; they have no infrastructure to deliver it.’
  6. “At first , there was deep skepticism; 80 percent of French residents polled said they would refuse.  But after a few deaths were reported, such huge lines formed that, in Lyon, the riot police were called.”
  7. “The chairman of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, Daniel Vasella, recently warned governments breaking their contracts might not be be first in line in the next pandemic.  ‘Reliable partners will be treated preferentially,’ Mr. Vasella said.”
  8. “Canada recently lent Mexico five million doses because Mexico’s first shipments were not due to arrive until this month.  Similar bilateral deals took place between Western and Eastern Europe, a W.H.O. spokesman said.”
  9. “The [U.S.] cancellation of 22 million doses out of 36 million ordered from CSL Ltd., an Australian manufacturer that fell behind on orders anyway…”
  10. “The [US] country also promised 25 million doses to the W.H.O. [and the rest will be stockpiled in bulk antigen form, i.e. a portion of which will not placed in viles.] an extra step that involves a separate payment.”

Vaccination, Flu, WHO, Pandemic, Poland, Canada, Mexico, France, Australia

 

Bradsher, Keith, “Report Says China Sold Bad Vaccines to Hospitals,” NYT, March 18, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/world/asia/19china.html

  1. ”A newspaper article by one of China’s best-known investigative reporters has reawakened a controversy over whether provincial authorities improperly stored vaccines in rooms without air-conditioning, rendering them ineffective, and then let them be administered to children.”
  2. ” a senior official there was relieved of all responsibilities at the end of last year because of improprieties related to the vaccines.”
  3. ”To monitor compliance by the hospitals, the center put a sticker on each package of vaccine to show that it had been approved.   But the stickers would not adhere to the packages in air-conditioned rooms, Mr. Chen said, so through 2006 and 2007 the center routinely had the vaccines transferred to a warm room where the stickers were attached.”
  4. ”The center stopped exposing them to heat in 2008 but did not issue a recall for those that might have already been damaged, he said.”
  5. ”The press office of the Shanxi Health Department declined to comment, saying that it had already made a statement to the official Xinhua news agency. Xinhua reported that Li Shukai, the deputy director of the department, had said that the China Economic Times article was “basically not true.”
  6. ”The article said the parents of 4 children who died and 74 children who developed severe health problems were blaming the vaccines. Mr. Li told Xinhua that provincial health experts had examined some of the children and concluded that their problems were not caused by vaccines.”
  7. ”World Health Organization data shows that 99 percent of Chinese children receive all three doses of polio vaccine and that 97 percent receive all three doses of a vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. The data also shows that the percentage of Chinese infants receiving vaccinations for hepatitis B, one of China’s leading health problems, rose to 91 percent in 2008 from 76 percent in 2004, the earliest year the figures were reported.”

Vaccination, China, WHO

 

Godlee, Fiona, “Conflicts of interest and pandemic flu,” BMJ 2010; 340:c2947, June 3, 2010. http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2947.full Last checked March 14, 2011.

  1. “…countries like France and the United Kingdom who have stockpiled drugs and vaccines are now busy unpicking vaccine contracts, selling unused vaccine to other countries, and sitting on huge piles of unused oseltamivir. Meanwhile drug companies have banked vast profits—$7bn (£4.8bn; €5.7bn) to $10bn from vaccines alone according to investment bank JP Morgan.1 Given the scale of public cost and private profit, it would seem important to know that WHO’s key decisions were free from commercial influence.”
  2. “An investigation by the BMJ and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, published this week (doi:10.1136/bmj.c2912), finds that this was far from the case.2 As reported by Deborah Cohen and Philip Carter, some of the experts advising WHO on the pandemic had declarable financial ties with drug companies that were producing antivirals and influenza vaccines. As an example, WHO’s guidance on the use of antivirals in a pandemic was authored by an influenza expert who at the same time was receiving payments from Roche, the manufacturer of oseltamivir (Tamiflu), for consultancy work and lecturing. Although most of the experts consulted by WHO made no secret of their industry ties in other settings, WHO itself has so far declined to explain to what extent it knew about these conflicts of interest or how it managed them.”
  3. “This lack of transparency is compounded by the existence of a secret “emergency committee,” which advised the director general Margaret Chan on when to declare the pandemic—a decision that triggered costly pre-established vaccine contracts around the world. Curiously, the names of the 16 committee members are known only to people within WHO.”
  4. “Cohen and Carter’s findings resonate with those of other investigations, most notably an inquiry by the Council of Europe, which reports this week and is extremely critical of WHO.1 It concludes that decision making around the influenza A/H1N1 crisis has been lacking in transparency.”
  5. “One of its chief protagonists is Paul Flynn, a UK member of parliament and a member of the council’s Parliamentary Assembly. He and others raised concerns last year about the lack of evidence to justify the scale of the international response to H1N1 (as also covered in the BMJ in December3), and the lack of transparency around the decision making process for declaring the pandemic.”
  6. “As Cohen and Carter report, WHO subsequently published in 2003 new rules on managing conflicts of interest. These recommended that people with a conflict of interest should not be involved in the part of the discussion or the piece of work affected by that interest or, in certain circumstances, that they should not participate in the relevant discussion or work at all.7 WHO seems not to have followed its own rules for the decision making around the pandemic.”
  7. “As Barbara Mintzes says in Cohen and Carter’s report, ‘No one should be on a committee developing guidelines if they have links to companies that either produce a product—vaccine or drug—or a medical device or test for a disease.’”

WHO, Flu, Pandemic, Misconduct, Pharma

 

Shino Yuasa, “Japan confirms its first case of new superbug gene,” AP September 7, 2010 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100907/ap_on_sc/as_japan_superbug

  1. “Japan has confirmed the nation’s first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday.”
  2. “The WHO says NDM-1 requires monitoring and further study. With effective measures, countries have successfully battled multi-drug resistant microorganisms in the past.”
  3. “It recommends that governments focus their efforts in four areas: surveillance, rational antibiotic use, legislation to stop sales of antibiotics without prescription, and rigorous infection prevention measures such as hand-washing in hospitals.”
  4. “Researchers say since many Americans and Europeans travel to India and Pakistan for elective procedures like cosmetic surgery, it was likely the superbug gene would spread worldwide.”
  5. “President of Indian Association of Medical Microbiology Dr Abhay Chaudhary, said, “Drug-resistant bacteria are not new. Whenever we use a particular antibiotic, bacteria will always try to develop resistance to it. This is a natural phenomena.””
  6. “”The potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great, and coordinated international surveillance is needed,” said a widely publicised report in the Lancet in August, which pinpointed India as the country of origin.”

NDM-1, Public Health, WHO

 

UN News CentreLarge swathes of Asia in grip of dengue, UN health agency cautions” September 18, 2010. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35973&Cr=dengue&Cr1=

  1. “The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that dengue fever, for which there is no treatment or vaccine, is sweeping across Asia, with the number of hospitalizations and severe cases growing.”
  2. “Some 2.5 billion people are at risk globally of contracting dengue, one of the world’s fastest-emerging infections, with more than 70 per cent of them living in the Asia-Pacific region.”
  3. “Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines and Viet Nam are among the Asian countries are badly affected by the disease, while Singapore is witnessing a decline.”
  4. “WHO said that the rise in cases in Asia is due to higher temperatures and rainfall in many areas this year, growing population densities and greater international travel.”
  5. “Although the increase in cases has not yet been conclusively linked to global warming, climate change plays a key role in the spread of dengue, with mosquitoes being found in areas where they were once not common, including the Republic of Korea and the highlands of Papua New Guinea.”

Dengue, WHO

 

Webster, Paul.Global action urged in response to new breed of drug-resistant bacteriaCanadian Medical Association Journal, October 19,2010. https://bbweb.towson.edu/bbcswebdav/internal/courses/1112CRMJ337001/wikis/group/a226cb0da6b0422981eff341f20f2e79/f665a7bdb37a43be853c6b6c25862bf3/ContentServervvvv.pdf

  1. “NDM-1 is an enzyme that makes bacteria resistant to a broad range of beta-lactam antibiotics, including carbapenem antibiotics, which are among the last-case treatments for infection when other drugs fail.” (Pg. 1)
  2. “NDM-1 is now widely disseminated throughout the Indian subcontinent because of contaminated sewage and water, and as a consequence, the threat is community-based, Nordmann added.”(Pg. 1)
  3. “‘At the WHO, there is nothing for the surveillance of any emerging antibiotic resistance. There is a very nice network on flu and malaria and tuberculosis, but nothing on antibiotic resistance, which is incredible.’” (Pg. 1)
  4. “One of the patients was infected with a clonal version of NDM-1 that was identical to one later discovered in an Australian patient with whom he’d had no contact, reinforcing the proposition that NDM-1 is capable of rapid and widespread clonal duplication.” (Pg. 2)
  5. “Pitout also warned the NDM-1 poses the greatest risk for those with hard-totreat infections, such as upper urinary tract infections, and that it has now been identified in Escherihia coli, a very common pathogen.” (Pg. 2)
  6. “‘Generally, the public health risk to Canadians is very low. Research shows all of the Canadian cases have acquired their infections in hospital settings while undergoing medical treatment in India or Pakistan’” (Pg. 2)
  7. “The agency also noted that ‘provinces and territories are not required to report cases of NDM-1 to PHAC; however PHAC encourages hospitals to report healthcare-associated infections to their province or territory.’” (Pg. 2)

NDM-1, Pakistan, WHO

 

Editors. “Antimicrobial resistance: revisiting the “tragedy of the commons”. WHO Vol. 88 Issue 11. November 2010.

  1. “Third, this particular resistance pattern is governed by a set of genes that can move easily from one bacterium to another.”
  2. “A further concern is that of the two drugs potentially capable of treating an infection due to one of these new multi-resistant strains, one of them, colistin, causes toxic effects to the kidney in about a third of people.”
  3. “Does the spread of NDM1-containing strains of resistant bacteria constitute a public health event of international concern? In my opinion the answer is an unequivocal “yes””
  4. “media reports blamed medical tourism for its spread”

NDM-1, WHO

2011

Kelly, Heath et al. “We should not be complacent about our population-based public health response to the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century.”  BMC Public Health. 2011. Last Checked October 18 2012.

  1. “Prior to the pandemic, there was limited scientific evidence to support border control measures. In particular no border screening measures would have detected prodromal or asymptomatic infections, and asymptomatic infections with pandemic influenza were common. School closures, when they were partial or of short duration, would not have interrupted spread of the virus in school-aged children, the group with the highest rate of infection worldwide.”
  2. “Australia used the pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions detailed in its pandemic plan in an effort to delay entry of the virus into the country, contain the virus to limited areas once it had entered the country, sustain a response when widespread community transmission had been established and to protect the vulnerable.”
  3. “In most countries it may be correct to conclude, as did an evaluation of the UK response, that the “pandemic and the response it generated have provided confirmation of the value of planning and preparedness.” It is also true that the apparent success of the response in 2009 must not lead to complacency. We now know that the relatively low virulence of pH1N1 meant we did not need to have implemented effective responses to get a good outcome.”
  4. “It is generally accepted that children, especially children of school age, are responsible for amplification of influenza epidemics. An intervention targeting schools could therefore theoretically be effective in interrupting an epidemic.”
  5. “There are obvious lessons to be learnt from the first pandemic of the 21st century, a pandemic which was much less severe than many plans had anticipated. If we think our response to this pandemic was adequate, we may be falsely reassured. A more severe pandemic may find us wanting. A mild pandemic may find us over reacting. However, with appropriate collection and analysis of data it should be possible to identify the severity of future pandemics early and to make a measured response.”
  6. “Revised pandemic plans should include different responses for different pandemic severities. All areas of pandemic planning need to be re-examined, but perhaps by alternative processes to those that led to current plans. Certainly, new evidence about the practical difficulties and/or ineffectiveness of control measures, such as border control and school closures, needs to be considered seriously. The inadequacy of many plans has recently been publicly acknowledged by the head of the WHO’s global influenza program.”

WHO, Pandemic, Public Health, Emergency Response

 

AP, “Officials Warn Swine Flu Outbreak in Britain May Spread to Rest of Europe,AOL Health. 7 January 2011. http://www.aolhealth.com/2011/01/07/britain-swine-flu-outbreak/

  1. “The annual flu season struck the U.K. early this year, with cases surging last month and doubling almost every week.”
  2. “The predominant strain infecting people is swine flu, which was responsible for the 2009 pandemic. Unlike most flu viruses, swine flu mostly affects people under 65 and many of its victims are previously healthy younger people with no underlying problems.”
  3. Vaccine Shortages: “In Britain, a vaccine shortage is forcing authorities to resort to leftover shots from last year’s swine flu pandemic. Some hospitals have been forced to cancel elective surgeries to accommodate extra flu patients.”
  4. “According to the World Health Organization, the swine flu virus detected in Britain is similar to the pandemic strain and no changes have been identified to suggest it is more lethal or transmissible.
  5. “Charles Penn, a WHO flu expert, said swine flu appeared to be the main virus spreading in Europe so other countries might soon experience an outbreak similar to Britain’s. ‘Any countries where (swine flu) is the predominant virus should be prepared for more incidents of infection in younger people than normal,’ he said.”

Pandemic, Flu, Public Health, Vaccination, Pharma, Europe, WHO

 

Editors, “Russia, U.S. to Resist Eliminating Smallpox Strains,” Global Security Newswire, January 18, 2011, http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20110118_8208.php Last checked Jan. 28, 2011

  1. “The United States and Russia are expected to argue to the international community this week that bioterrorism fears justify their continued retention of smallpox strains for countermeasure research purposes, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Jan. 13).”
  2. “Envoys from 34 member governments to the World Health Organization, including Moscow and Washington, are slated tomorrow to debate whether adequate study has been conducted on producing smallpox countermeasures so that a cutoff date could be established for eliminating the Russian and U.S. strains. The WHO Executive Board would then turn the matter over to the entire World Health Assembly for a verdict in May.”
  3. “Washington has said it must retain its smallpox samples to prepare new medical treatments and vaccines that would be used in the event of a biological weapons strike or the unintended release of the deadly virus from a third party (see GSN, Jan. 14).”
  4. “Moscow also thinks its smallpox cache must be retained for study and is anticipated to agree with Washington’s argument on the matter, said Vladimir Starodubov, a member of the Kremlin’s delegation to the WHO Executive Board.”
  5. “Foreign states and public health specialists, however, worry that U.S. and Russian smallpox stocks could be misappropriated or accidentally released.”
  6. “Hundreds of millions of people are thought to have died following exposure to the virus — approximately one-third of the total number contaminated. A worldwide public health effort resulted in smallpox officially being eliminated from nature in 1980.”
  7. “The debate over eliminating the last known smallpox stocks has been highly contentious. Some argue the virus could be created in a laboratory using synthetic biology technology, leaving complete elimination unachievable. That possibility makes it even more important to destroy the Russian and U.S. stockpiles, others counter (see GSN, Sept. 10, 2010).”
  8. “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today stores 451 specimens of the smallpox virus, while Russia keeps 120 different strains at its Vector laboratory in Siberia, biological weapons expert Jonathan Tucker stated in a recent report.”
  9. “Developing states are likely to make the main push to eliminate the smallpox remnants, according to the Journal.”
  10. “A 2010 assessment by a WHO advisory board said that smallpox strains were still necessary for the preparation of antiviral medicines in addition to a safer vaccine. Laboratories in the United States and Russia do both kinds of work. U.S. officials say work on antiviral medicines is especially needed as no post-infection medications for are presently licensed.”
  11. “There are scientifically valid reasons to continue to study the virus in safe and secure circumstances,” CDC pox and rabies branch chief Inger Damon said. Fewer than 10 CDC scientists, including Damon, have access to the centers’ smallpox strains (Betsy McKay, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18).”
  12. “To put it bluntly, it is the same logic by which the superpowers continue the possession of the nuclear weapons; they wish to hold o to the smallpox virus as a super bioweapon,” said Indian virologist Kalyan Banerjee, who served on the WHO advisory panel on smallpox research.”
  13. “Eliminating smallpox is “not good public policy,” argued Kenneth Bernard, a health security specialist for the Clinton and Bush administrations. Varieties of the virus could be present in addition to the U.S. and Russian caches, creating a public danger, he said.”
  14. “If the sanctioned stocks are eradicated, ‘any lab, scientist or country found to have the virus after the date of destruction is de facto guilty of very serious crimes against humanity,’ WHO smallpox eradication campaign chief D.A. Henderson said.”
  15. “The World Health Assembly in 1996 called for the disposal of all smallpox stores, but bioterror concerns have helped keep the material in existence.”

Smallpox, Russia, WHO, CDC, Bioterrorism

 

Editors, “Report of the Review Committee on the Functioning of the International Health Regulations (2005) and on Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) 2009” March 7, 2011. http://www.who.int/ihr/preview_report_review_committee_mar2011_en.pdf

  1. “The pandemic H1N1 is the first Public Health Emergency of International concern to occur since the revised IHR came into force…Because H1N1 caused illness that did not require hospitalization in the vast majority of cases, the question of severity of the pandemic and how to characterize it became a key challenge. As the H1N1 virus spread to several countries within days, the possibility of rapid containment, a tenet of planning in WHO’s multi-stage response, was never really feasible”
  2. “The world is ill prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global sustained and threatening public health emergency…many State Parties lack core capacities to detect, assess and report potential health threats and are not on a path to complete their obligations for plans and infrastructure by the 2012 deadline specified in the IHR…Only 58% of the respondents reported having developed national plans to meet core capacity requirements, and as few as 10% of reporting countries indicated that they had fully established the capacities envisaged by the IHR.”
  3. “The most important structural shortcoming of the IHR is the lack of enforceable sanctions. For example, if a country fails to explain why it has adopted more restrictive traffic and trade measures than those recommended by the WHO, no legal consequences follow.”
  4. “The committee also noted systemic difficulties that confronted WHO and some shortcomings on the part of WHO: The absence of a consistent, measurable and understandable depiction of severity of the pandemic…Inadequately dispelling confusion about the definition of pandemic…A pandemic structure that was needlessly complex…Lack of a sufficiently robust, systematic and open set of procedures for disclosing, recognizing and managing conflicts of interest among expert advisors.”
  5. “Despite the progress that the IHR represent and WHO’s success in mobilizing contributions from the global community, the unavoidable reality is that tens of millions of people would be at risk of dying in a severe global pandemic. Unless this fundamental gap between global need and global capacity is closed, we invite future catastrophe.”

WHO, Public Health, Flu, Pandemic

 

McNeill, Robert, G., Jr., “Response of W.H.O. to Swine Flu Is Criticized,” NYT March 10, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/health/policy/11flu.html?ref=health Last checked March 14, 2011.

  1. “A panel of independent experts has harshly reviewed the World Health Organization’s handling of the 2009 epidemic of H1N1 swine flu, though it found no evidence supporting the most outlandish accusation made against the agency: that it exaggerated the alarm to help vaccine companies get rich.”
  2. “The world is still unprepared to handle a severe pandemic, and if a more dangerous virus emerges, ‘tens of millions would be at risk of dying,’ the panel said in its draft report, which was posted on an obscure corner of the W.H.O.’s Web site on Thursday.”
  3. “Although millions of doses of vaccine ultimately went unused, the panel found ‘no evidence of malfeasance.’”
  4. “Later, when rich nations donated 78 million doses for use in poor ones, the health agency could not deploy them because it was bogged down in negotiations with vaccine companies over liability and costs.”
  5. “The panel, which has experts from 24 countries and is led by Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine, criticized the agency’s “needlessly complex” definition of a pandemic, which had six levels of alert, based on the virus’s geographical spread, not its severity.”
  6. “Nonetheless, it concluded, ‘no critic of W.H.O. has produced any direct evidence of commercial influence on decision-making.’Communications were also clumsy. Ceasing routine news conferences after the disease was elevated to pandemic status was ‘ill advised,’ the report said, and the agency responded ‘with insufficient vigor’ when its integrity was questioned.”
  7. “Countries that needed technical help could not obtain it in enough languages…”
  8. “Asking countries to submit counts of laboratory-confirmed cases created confusion, the report said, adding that knowing hospitalization and death rates would have been better.”
  9. “Although the W.H.O. excels at sending small teams to focused outbreaks like a village overwhelmed by Ebola, it fumbled even simple aspects of a prolonged effort, like food, lodging and child care for its staff.”
  10. “With help from national health agencies like those of the United States and Canada, the W.H.O. identified the virus quickly and got seed strains to vaccine makers. It also sent experts to countries that asked for help.”
  11. “Vaccine companies use slow 60-year-old technology, diagnostic tests are cumbersome, and virologists know too little about which mutations are the most dangerous.”
  12. “The panel urged the creation of a ‘global reserve corps’ of experts for emergencies, and a $100 million fund for their use. It urged vaccine makers to reserve 10 percent of their production for poor countries. It also criticized some international rules. For example, there is no way to punish nations that needlessly close borders or curtail trade. In 2009, many countries banned pork imports in the mistaken belief that a human flu with some swinish genes could be spread by bacon. Others closed borders or forcibly quarantined visitors with fevers.”

WHO, Flu, Pandemic, Public Health, Vaccination, Pharma, Misconduct, Ethics

 

Chan, Dr Margaret, “Combat Drug Resistance: No Action Today Means No Cure Tomorrow,” World Health Organization, April 6, 2011 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2011/whd_20110407/en/   Last Checked 9/5/2011

  1. “In the absence of urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated.”
  2. “The development of resistance is a natural biological process that will occur, sooner or later, with every drug.”
  3. “We have assumed that miracle cures will last forever, with older drugs eventually failing only to be replaced by newer, better and more powerful ones.”
  4. “For some diseases, like malaria, our options are very limited as we have only a single class of effective drugs- artemisinin-based combination therapies- with which to treat more than 200 million falciparum cases each year.”
  5. “While TB deaths are declining, in just the past year nearly half a million people developed multidrug-resistant TB, and a third of them died as a result.”
  6. “Irrational and inappropriate use of antimicrobials is by far the biggest driver of drug resistance.”
  7. “In several parts of the world, more than 50% in tonnage of all antimicrobial production is used in food-producing animals.”

Drug Resistance, WHO, Malaria, Tuberculosis

 

Editors, “Flu Vaccine Production to Double by 2015, WHO Says,” 14 July 2011, Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/14/health-flu-vaccine-idUSLDE76D0XD20110714 Last Checked 19 July 2011.

  1. “Global production of seasonal flu vaccine is expected to double to 1.7 billion doses by 2015, with 11 new manufacturers coming onstream in developing countries.”
  2. “If a new influenza pandemic erupts, the world’s projected 37 vaccine makers could potentially triple their annual production of trivalent seasonal vaccine to make 5.4 billion doses of pandemic vaccine.”
  3. “‘What we are continuing to do is to make sure that not only will there be more pandemic vaccine if need be, but also that the sites where these vaccines will be produced will be more diverse geographically and more populations of the world will have earlier access to pandemic vaccine.'”
  4. “The WHO came under fire during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009-2010, the world’s first pandemic in 40 years, for slow distribution of vaccines in poor countries and allegations of drug industry influence on its decision-making.”
  5. “An independent review panel which issued a report earlier this year on WHO’s handling of the emergency said that the world remained ill-prepared for a major pandemic.”
  6. “‘We do not currently have the capacity to produce in a timely way sufficient vaccine to protect the world’s population in the face of a global, severe influenza pandemic.’”

Vaccination, Flu, WHO

 

Christian Nordqvist, Christian, “2011-2012 Flu Vaccines Approved by FDA” 18 July 2011, Medical News Today http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/231285.php Last Checked 19 July 2011.

  1. “Six manufacturers have had their flu vaccines approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) for the coming 2011-2012 season.”
  2. “The Agency explained in a communiqué that vaccination is crucial in the drive to control influenza, a contagious respiratory infection caused by influenza virus strains.”
  3. “This year’s vaccine formulation is aimed at protecting against three virus strains that experts say will be the most common in the coming flu season. This time round they are the same strains as those that circulated during the last flu season.”
  4. “According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), from 5% to 20% of Americans develop flu annually.”
  5. “200,000 people have to be hospitalized because of complications caused by flu.”
  6. “Between 3,000 and 49,000 die each year because of flu.”
  7. “Experts from WHO (World Health Organization), FDA, CDC, and other Agencies worldwide identify which virus strains are most likely to cause flu during the coming season. The following strains have been predicted to be circulating: (1.) B/Brisbane/60/2008-like virus (2.) A/Perth /16/2009 (H3N2)-like virus (3.) A/California/7/09 (H1N1)-like virus (pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza virus).”
  8. “‘There is always a possibility of a less than optimal match between the virus strains predicted to circulate and the virus strains that end up causing the most illness. However, even if the vaccine and the circulating strains are not an exact match, the vaccine may reduce the severity of the illness or may help prevent influenza-related complications.’”

Vaccination, Flu, WHO, CDC

 

Gallagher, James, “Tuberculosis Relative Could Be New Vaccine”, BBC News, September 4, 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14761366 Last checked 9/6/2011

  1. “It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death, according to the World Health Organization, killing 1.7 million people each year.”
  2. “The BCG vaccine has variable results. It has been shown to be between 0% and 80% effective in different parts of the world.”
  3. “There are also potential problems giving the live vaccine to some of the most at risk patients- those with HIV.”

Tuberculosis, Vaccination, Drug Resistance, WHO

 

Paddock, Catharine, “Resistant TB Spreading In Europe At Alarming Rate, WHO,Medical News Today, September 15, 2011 http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234376.php  Last Checked 9/15/2011

  1. “Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis is a disease that could cause a pandemic in Western Europe and kill thousands of people if health authorities fail to tackle it properly.”
  2. “‘TB is an old disease that never went away, and now it is evolving with a vengeance.’”
  3. “Zsuzsanna Jakab said complacency has allowed the disease to resurge and it must be tackled now to avoid huge human and economic costs.”
  4. “TB is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria that gives rise to over 9 million new cases worldwide every year and nearly 2 million deaths. It is the leading cause of death among curable infectious diseases.”
  5. “WHO declared TB a global emergency in 1993.”
  6. “However, the cause for the current alarm is the rising number of cases of drug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB (multi-drug resistant TB), which develops when the first-line drugs are misused or mismanaged.”
  7. “The concern is that the resistant forms will rise to pandemic proportions unless TB control is managed properly.”
  8. “The death rate for TB is about 7%: this can rise to 50% for the resistant forms, according to WHO figures that also show cases of MDR-TB and XDR-TB are spreading at the rate of around 440,000 new cases a year worldwide.”
  9. “These resistant forms of TB are much harder and costlier to treat. It can take two years or more, and cost up to 16,000 US dollars in drugs alone per patient. If the patient needs isolation care in a hospital, then the cost is in the hundreds of thousands.”
  10. “More than 80,000 of these annual cases of resistant TB occur in WHO’s European region, which covers 53 European and Central Asian countries.”

Tuberculosis, Drug Resistance, Public Health, WHO

 

Fox, Liam, “WHO Warns of Untreatable Tuberculosis,ABC News, November 26, 2011 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-26/who-warns-of-untreatable-tuberculosis/3696226 Last Checked December 3, 2011

  1. “The World Health Organization is warning of the potential for an untreatable form of tuberculosis to develop on Australia’s doorstep.”
  2. “It says infections of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in Papua New Guinea’s remote south-west have reached crisis levels.”
  3. “The country’s health minister says tuberculosis is now a greater health emergency than HIV/AIDS.”
  4. “‘Children 14-years-old infected with MDR TB in a family with already five patients dying.’”
  5. “A research team from WHO found the rural health centres are rundown with very limited or no medical supplies.”
  6. “There is no TB coordinator in the region so no one is monitoring patients to ensure they stick to the lengthy treatment of drugs required to beat the disease, meaning many do not.”
  7. “WHO’s Dr. Donald Enarson says, ‘Multi-drug resistance has passed from being created from bad treatment to now being established in a community by itself and spreading among community members.’”
  8. “Local medical records show 94 people have contracted MDR TB in Western Province since 2005.”
  9. “Dr. Ernesto Jaramillo says, ‘When treatment is delivered under the current conditions which many patients are having, then it’s a matter of months or years before we have forms of TB that cannot be cured.’”

Tuberculosis, Drug Resistance, Australia, WHO

 

Branswell, Helen, “New Flu Strain Makes Health Experts Nervous,” Scientific American, December 2, 2011 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-h3n2-flu-strain-from-swine Last Checked December 6, 2011

  1. “A new variant of an influenza virus that circulates in pigs has been jumping occasionally into people, providing a surprisingly early opportunity for public health officials to test out some of the lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.”
  2. “The cases leave public health authorities in the U.S. and elsewhere wondering if a new swine-origin flu virus is circulating at low levels among humans—and what needs to be done if that is indeed happening.”
  3. “The new virus has acquired the M gene of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus; studies suggest that this gene may enhance transmissibility of the virus.”
  4. “The WHO is trying to draw on the experience of 2009 as it maps out its response to the new virus.”
  5. “Among the things the WHO is working on is finding a scientifically correct yet politically sensitive name to call this virus.”

Flu, Biosafety, Drug Resistance, WHO

2012

 

 

 

 

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