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Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko greeting a young patient while visiting a children’s hospital in Kiev on Friday.
The World Health Organization said Friday that a “high to very high intensity of respiratory diseases” had been reported in Russia and Belarus but it was now less concerned about a big outbreak in Ukraine.
“The initial analysis of information from Ukraine indicates that the numbers of severe cases do not appear to be excessive when compared to the experience of other countries and do not represent any change in the transmission or virulence of the virus,” the WHO said in a statement posted on its web site.
Ukraine, Belarus and some Russian cities have recently extended school breaks because of fears about the pandemic virus. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said school closures were among steps that could slow viral spread at the beginning of an outbreak, but had less usefulness once the flu had reached 5 percent of a given population.
“After the virus becomes more widespread in a country, closing schools has less of an impact,” he told a news briefing earlier in the week. “If you make a decision to close schools and universities and other institutions you have to be aware there are social and economic consequences of this decision.”
The Russian areas worst hit by swine flu are in the Far East, Siberia and Northwest Russia, Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova said last week, without elaborating. At least 31 deaths have been linked to swine flu in Russia, also known as the H1N1 virus, and more than 4,560 people have been registered as infected.
The WHO said Friday that the winter flu season, which began early in the northern hemisphere this year, may be peaking in parts of North America and western Europe, including parts of the southern and southeastern United States, Iceland and Ireland.
The H1N1 virus has now spread to 206 countries, with the latest confirmed cases in Somalia, Nigeria and Burundi. More than 6,250 people have died, mostly in the Americas.
(Reuters, MT)
Frank Elliott
I live in the northern U.S. state of Minnesota. Our largest problem is that the manufacturers of the H1N! flu vaccine have not been able to produce enough of the vaccine. We are just now vaccinating our health professionals. We've also just started some clinics for mothers with very young children. High risk adults from the age of roughly 18 to 64 with high risk chronic illnesses have received virtually no vaccinations yet. Supposedly our state has received 650,000 doses, but the distribution system is a mess. Neither my family doctor nor my allergist have any idea when they will have the vaccine. Contrast this to England where high risk adults are being called in by their doctors for appointments to get a shot. Here in Minnesota nobody knows where to find the vaccine for h1n1 yet. Our U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is meeting with state public health officials to gather suggestions and hopefully develop plans so this distribution problem does not take place in the future. She's also seeking ways to manufacture the vaccine faster. These are times when I wish we had a publicly funded health system so that vaccine could be widely and effectively distributed. So, right now we have about 22 million cases of H1N1 flu here and about 4,000 folks have died. Unfortunately adults like me with multiple chronic illness such as asthma and diabetes are out of luck. There's a good chance of us getting very sick and no way to get the vaccine even though there are 650,000 doses somewhere out in our State. We're just not prepared for this. If the bird flu ever comes, I hope this will have taught us to better prepare.