Gripe A (H1N1)
Casos confirmados: Áustria (1), Alemanha (6), Canada (85), EUA (231), França (2), Espanha (13), Holanda (1), Irlanda (1), Israel (3), Itália (1), México (506), Nova Zelândia (4), Suiça (1) e UK (15) . link link
Mapa da gripe: link
Mapa da gripe: link
An Anti-Flu Campaign for the Gross-Out Era link
Entretanto, os ministros da EU- 27 apelaram à calma dos cidadãos europeus, reafirmando que os planos de contingência estão devidamente activados linkNO TIME TO BE SICK:Why Everyone Suffers . When Workers Don’t have Paid Sick Leave link
Etiquetas: diário da pandemia
8 Comments:
Esteve Bem a MS
Os especuladores do costume levantaram a questão de a ministra da Saúde, Ana Jorge, não ter decidido a restricção da distribuição de Tamiflu, à semelhança do que sucede em Espanha linkA MS terá assim encontrado uma forma de dar destino à "reserva estratégica" existente em Portugal a atingir certamente o limite dos prazos de validade.
«A decisão do governo de Espanha - onde há 10 casos confirmados de vírus da gripe suína - foi justificada como medida para evitar uma eventual tendência para a auto-medicação que possa ser ainda mais prejudicial para o combate à pandemia. »
Ou tratar-se-à antes de problemas ligados ao nível de stocks da "reserva estratégica" ?
By Jacob Goldstein
Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO Initiative for Vaccine Research, is talking to reporters about the flu outbreak. Here’s what she’s saying.
11:05 “It would be critically important to have a vaccine if you want to stop a pandemic, which might be coming with this virus.”
11:06 Would the seasonal flu vaccine be effective against the H1N1 disease now circulating? The results of preliminary tests “show there is very little chance that seasonal vaccines … would be effective against this particular virus.” Tests are ongoing to see whether a seasonal vaccine plus a booster known as an adjuvant might be effective.
11:07 Are we sure that a new vaccine will be successful? “For this particular vaccine, there is no uncertainty” because there is tremendous experience in the vaccine industry to make vaccine both against seasonal influenza and the avian H5N1 virus (commonly called bird flu).
11:09 It takes four to six months to have the first doses available after the virus is identified. “It’s a long journey, even if you know by heart all the steps.” You first need to isolate the virus. This is done. Then you need to “tweak” it to make it suitable for vaccine manufacturing. This is happening now, and is likely to be done by mid-May to late-may. It will be immediately shipped to the manufacturers, where they will adapt it to their production techniques. Then they will inoculate eggs and cultivate the virus in the eggs. Then they harvest and kill the virus, and formulate the vaccine.
11:11 The candidate vaccines will then have to be tested in humans. Animal tests don’t tell you if it will work in people. Then national regulatory agencies will have to approve the vaccine. “This is absolutely mandatory and obligatory because by no means do we want to compromise the safety of otherwise healthy people.”
11:14 Preparation to make a vaccine against the strain should proceed. It would be too much of a gamble to wait to see how often the disease causes severe disease.
11:17 There are a few dozen influenza vaccine manufacturers in the world. They are in both industrialized and developing countries. The main capacity is in Europe and North America.
Dr Marie-Paule KIENY is the Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Initiative for Vaccine Research, a position she has held since 2001.
Muito interessante este artigo publicado no CDC's Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report link sobre o relatório, da OMS e de agências de saúde pública, no México, Canadá e os EU,onde se descreve em pormenor o primeiro inquérito sobre o surto no México. De particular interesse é o facto de a vigilância intensiva que começou no México, na segunda metade de abril incidir sobre os casos mais graves:
Até à data, este processo de inquérito centrou-se em pacientes que procuram atendimento nos hospitais.
Para descobrir o verdadeiro espectro da doença é necessário desenvolver com urgência "investigações adicionais de forma a determinar a proporção de pacientes que têm doença grave e a extensão da cadeia de transmissão da doença.
«A ministra acrescentou que "a existência de Tamiflu nas farmácias de venda ao público, assim como de outros dispositivos que forem considerados necessários", deverá estar disponível, de modo a que "qualquer pessoa, por indicação médica, o possa adquirir". »
O tamiflu só poderá ser vendido nas farmácias mediante prescrição médica.
Concordo que desta vez esteve bem a ministra da Saúde.
Tamiflu? Money can't buy it - but gags are 10 a penny linkThe meeter-and-greeter at the entrance to John Lewis in Oxford Street, London, is slightly deaf. "Place mats?" he says, when I ask him whether the store is selling anti-swine flu face masks. "Downstairs, in china."
Place mats are not in short supply, but face masks certainly are. There are none in John Lewis. More surprisingly, there are none in the big Boots opposite. "We've sold out. Everything's gone," says an assistant. "Masks, Tamiflu, everything. We're advising people to wash their hands well and use hand gel."
Around the corner, at the Wigmore Pharmacy in Wimpole Street, two young men in the queue are also trying to get some Tamiflu. "Sorry," says the pharmacist. "It's all gone and you won't get any without a prescription. The government has taken control of the supplies.".../
.../ People are cautious, fretful enough to exhaust stocks of Tamiflu and even the largely useless face masks, but not yet panic-stricken. On the Victoria line from Oxford Circus to King's Cross, a man says the £7.50 masks won't work - "Have you ever used them to do DIY - they never stop the dust" - and adds with a laugh: "It's like a Monty Python sketch ... It's a major epidemic and there's no cure, but don't panic!"
The spirit of the Blitz lives on.
guardiam 01.05.09
Há quem aproveite a crise para fazer bom jornalismo.
“At the present time, I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing transmission to other countries,” Dr. Michael J. Ryan, the director of the World Health Organization global alert and response team, said in a teleconference from Geneva. “We have to expect that Phase 6 will be reached. We have to hope that it is not.” linkPhase 6, the highest level in the organization’s alert system, is a pandemic. But Dr. Ryan emphasized that the term describes the geographic spread of a disease, not its severity. There can be a pandemic of a mild disease. The current level, Phase 5, means that the disease is spreading in communities — not just within households or in returning travelers — in two countries in one of the World Health Organization’s six regions, in this case the United States and Mexico.
NYTimes 03.05.09
In the US, Dr Richard Besser, acting director of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said: "We're seeing encouraging signs that this virus so far is not looking more severe than a strain that we would see during seasonal flu."
Ainda não é desta que vamos todos desta para melhor!
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