Word: virus
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World Health Organization (WHO) officials declared a pandemic of H1N1 influenza on Thursday, two months after the first cases of the new flu virus were reported in Mexico. It is the first flu pandemic in 41 years, since the 1968 Hong Kong...
...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...
...panicked reaction, beyond the assault of tabloid headlines. When people panic about a new disease, they start flooding the hospitals even when there's nothing wrong with them - a phenomenon carried out by the "worried well." They suck up limited resources from patients who are really sick from the virus - or are sick or injured otherwise - and that has a palpable impact on health care. "There are all kinds of adverse effects," says Fukuda...
...return to Kashmir and rest of the South Asian region only when the core issue of Kashmir is resolved as per wishes and aspirations of its people," says Farooq. Dr. Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a political analyst and a professor of law at the Kashmir University, agrees: "It is the virus and not the symptoms which require to be taken care...