Health assembly opens with swine flu focus

Thirty-nine countries have so far officially reported 8480 cases of the H1N1 swine fever infection, the opening of the 62nd world health assembly (WHA) in Geneva has heard.

The meeting was told on Monday that Mexico has reported by far the biggest number, a total of 2895 cases, including 66 deaths, while the US has so far recorded some 4714 cases, including four deaths.

Other confirmed cases with no deaths include Argentina (1 case), Australia (1), Austria (1), Belgium (4), Brazil (8), China (5), Colombia (11), Cuba (3), Denmark (1), Ecuador (1), El Salvador (4), Finland (2), France (14), Germany (14), Guatemala (3), India (1), Ireland (1), Israel (7), Italy (9), Japan (7), Malaysia (2), Netherlands (3), New Zealand (9), Norway (2), Panama (54), Peru (1), Poland (1), Portugal (1), Republic of Korea (3), Spain (103), Sweden (3), Switzerland (1), Thailand (2), Turkey (1) and the United Kingdom (82).

Delegates arriving for the start of the 10-day WHA assembly were given information packs containing advice on what to do in the event of suffering flu-like symptoms.

The WHA is the key decision-making body of the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) which is coordinating the worldwide response to the outbreak.

Speaking at a briefing on the eve of the meeting, Dr Keiji Fukuda of the WHO told journalists he wanted to clarify current "confusion" about the antivirals being used in the ongoing efforts to combat the spread of the virus.

He said," I just want to make two main points. First, the WHO is not making any changes in its recommendations about antiviral use, and, second, there is confusion about whether we were seeing resistance in these new influenza AH1N1 viruses. The fact is we are not seeing any increased resistance.

"Of course, we always remain concerned about the possibility of that. These viruses, like any other pathogens can develop that property but we have not seen it and so it is something like many other aspects of this phenomenon that we will keep watching for. But we do not see it right now."

He added, "Certainly, the global numbers have increased a lot. If you plot them up, you will see that it is almost a straight line with cases increasing, but the vast majority of those cases have been reported from the United States and Mexico.

"There is a wide geographical dispersion of the virus and the majority of the increase in numbers is still coming from those two regions. In terms of the level of worry at WHO, I think that we are very similar to where we were at the beginning.

"At the beginning we made the point over and over again, we knew that it was a phenomenon that really required close monitoring. We know what past pandemics have done, we know this is a new influenza virus, and we know that we are few weeks into this situation. We do not quite see what the future is going to bring."

He went on, "We do not know what the pattern of it will be if it continues to spread, we do not know what the pattern will be in the southern hemisphere, if it goes into Africa, and we do not know what changes will occur over time.

"Since we have seen changes occur over time in other pandemics and since we have seen the impact, or the severity of the impact, varying from population to population, it is too early to know what the potential changes are.

"We have to continue to monitor the outbreak very carefully."

Dr Fukuda said the WHO was not recommending travel restrictions related to the outbreak of the influenza A(H1N1) virus.

"Individuals who are ill should delay travel plans and returning travellers who fall ill should seek appropriate medical care. These recommendations are prudent measures which can limit the spread of many communicable diseases, including influenza," he said.

Swine flu is a highly contagious acute respiratory disease.

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