Word: h1n1
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...Tuesday the World Health Organization (WHO) updated the numbers on the spread of the H1N1 flu: 26,563 cases in 73 countries, including a growing outbreak in Australia, where over 1,000 cases have been recorded in the state of Victoria alone. That state also saw the disease spread in the community - outside schools and hospitals - which until now has happened most clearly in the U.S. and Mexico, the two nations that have so far been hit hardest by the H1N1 virus. (See pictures of soccer in the time of swine...
...month ago that it was raising the pandemic alert to phase 5 (out of six phases), there were 114 confirmed cases in just a handful of countries, along with an unknown - though suspected to be large - number of infections in Mexico. That wasn't a huge total, but H1N1 was clearly spreading and it fit the WHO's very specific criteria for the pandemic phase to change from level 4 to level 5: it was a novel influenza virus that was sustaining human-to-human spread in at least two different countries (in that case, the U.S. and Mexico...
...experts go, Osterholm has been a doomsayer, predicting that the world was far from ready for a new flu virus. But in the early days of the H1N1 outbreak, he was full of praise for the WHO's quick reaction. Now, however, he thinks that the global body, perhaps under pressure from governments that are worried about the economic impact of a full pandemic declaration, may be abandoning science-backed decision-making. "The public reaction and the media should not drive the science," he says...
...course, pandemic-alert levels are themselves fairly arbitrary categories. If and when the WHO moves to level 6, nothing meaningful will really have changed about the virus. But however arbitrary the alert levels are - and however unprecedented or confusing the H1N1 situation may be - the pandemic-phase system was devised by the WHO itself. So if the group allows itself to be influenced by political pressure or lets the alert levels become a simple judgment call from within the organization, then something will be lost. "The WHO is supposed to be an independent body we can all respect," says Osterholm...
...address touched on the recent outbreak of H1N1 virus—a matter that her office must grapple with—noting that the disease was spreading from North America to the rest of the world and that HKS students’ expertise and insight are needed to combat this and other problems...