Thailand Readies For Expected Influenza Outbreak

[george]

Health Ministry readies for expected influenza outbreak

CHIANG MAI: -- The Ministry of Public Health has ordered public health offices across the country to make preparations for an influenza pandemic which many epidemiologists believe could occur in 2007.

Dr. Surasing Wisarutrat, deputy chief public health officer for Thailand's northern province of Chiang Mai, revealed that the ministry had issued the order in response to forecasts that the H5N1 avian flu virus could mutate and spread to humans over the next two years.

The next global influenza pandemic could affect more people than any previous outbreaks due to the increasing speed and convenience of global communications.

To prepare for the expected pandemic, public health officers are instructing the public on basic hygiene measures, while also readying hospitals to cope with an influx of patients.

Meanwhile, Public Health Minister Suchai Charoenratanakul has instructed all hospitals to report new cases of bird flu to the Ministry of Public Health's Bureau of Epidemiology within 24 hours.

"All hospitals are required to report new cases of dengue fever to the bureau within 24 hours as well", he said.

--TNA 2005-06-28

[The_Moog]

'Preparations' should involve stocking up on vaccines (which are hard to come by and need ordering).

Preparation does not mean getting the hospital mortuaries ready, nor some salaryman flouncing round the country spouting empty verbiage like. 'oh yeah, flu, watch out, be prepared'

This Press Release is typical TNA arse. Why do you pay for this codswallop?

[The_Moog]

This could be the big story of 2006. Note that European countries are pre-emptively planning ahead and buying in vaccine, while Thailand is just readying the hospital wards for the influx.

NHS buys 2m doses of vaccine to protect staff from bird flu

By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor and Richard Lloyd Parry

THE Government will buy two million doses of a bird flu vaccine as a first line of defence against a possible pandemic.

The doses would be stockpiled and used to protect key medical and emergency workers if avian flu threatened to spread from person to person.

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, said yesterday that manufacturers will be invited to tender for a contract to supply the H5N1 vaccine. Nobody knows if H5N1 — which has killed more than 50 people in Asia in the past two years — will become a pandemic, but the World Health Organisation has warned governments that it is a possibility. If so, the vaccine would need to be tailored to match the precise strain that developed the ability to spread through human populations.

It was confirmed yesterday that bird flu had claimed its first Indonesian victims. Tests showed that Iwan Siswara Rafei, 38, and his one-year-old and nine-year-old daughters had died of the disease within days of one another this month.

Siti Fadillah Supari, the Indonesian Health Minister, said that it was not known how they had been infected but that an investigation was being conducted. The crucial question is whether the three victims caught the virus from infected birds or from another person.