Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman of Ebay, posts about “Why care, why prepare?” from his perspective as individual member of society. His points -

1. No matter what gets done at a global level, hospitals and health care may not be there for us when we need it in a pandemic.

2. Families and neighborhoods will be on their own during a severe pandemic.

3. We can’t expect government to tell us what to do.

4. We have to look to ourselves and each other to make it through.

5. Learn as much as we can and think about how we might react should a pandemic occur.

Tags: pandemic flu, preparedness, pandemiv flu leadership blog

Post from: Blisstree

Pandemic Flu Forum – Why care, why prepare?

“Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the federal or state government will rescue them will be tragically mistaken.”

[source: Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog]

Tags: pandemic, flu, avian, bird flu, preparedness

Post from: Blisstree

Flu quote of the day

The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog.

From the blog:

This five-week online event, beginning on May 22, is part of an ongoing effort by the Department to help Americans become more prepared for a pandemic. The blog summit provides an opportunity to have an open conversation and shape the thinking about how to communicate the critical need for preparedness at home and within workplaces and communities.

The blog summit is intended to be a dynamic online conversation; it is open to the public for commenting. Public comments will be moderated, but participating bloggers are able to post freely. Representatives from the Department will not blog, but will comment on blog posts.

To help facilitate the dialogue, a series of questions will be posed over the five weeks, addressing the need for all Americans to prepare for pandemic influenza, the challenges that leaders will face in communicating this need and the potential solutions for overcoming those challenges. The blog will also serve to communicate lessons learned from the Leadership Forum and to communicate what needs to be done moving forward.

I’ll cover one question per day as posted on the HHS blog.

Tags: HHS, pandemic preparedness, blog

Post from: Blisstree

The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog

In a classic outbreak scenario, the script called for a student infected with a new strain of H5N1 returns from Indonesia and dies, but not before infecting others, including members of a swimming team.

By end of day One, 12 people contracted the disease in four states, and 25 percent die.

By Day Two, the cases double to 25 and the CDC is forced to consider severe control measures – closing schools, banning flights from Indonesia, or even shutting U.S. borders.

The CDC decided against these measures. Instead, they send experts to Indonesia, release a quarter of the U.S. stockpile of flu vaccines and limits all incoming international flights to just 10 US airports to screen passengers and limit the disease’s spread.

This part two of a three-stage flu pandemic drill, the CDC simulated how agencies would marshall its resources and manage the public.

“If we were at the beginning of a pandemic this is exactly what it would look like,” said CDC Director Julie Gerberding at a news conference early in the 48-hour drill, which involved hundreds of officials. “If things turn out wrong it could lead to a “catastrophe beyond our planning,” she said.

The exercise captured the hazardous and difficult decisions that needed to be made quickly in the event of a pandemic.

From a similar exercise back in January, here are issues that need immediate answer and responses:

In a final round in May, the virus gets to Atlanta and takes out 40 percent of CDC’s workforce.

[sources: washingtonpost;reuters]

Tags: U.S. CDC, center of disease control and prevention, flu, exercise, drill, pandemic

Post from: Blisstree

CDC conducts flu epidemic drill

Despite throwing away 10 million unused vaccines from last season, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention approved the production of this much vaccine supply for the coming flu season.

Earlier this year, there were 18 million doses of vaccines unsold, due in part of delay in distribution and a mild flu season. There was worry that scenario will cause vaccine manufacturers to procude less for the coming season, and less people being vaccinated. So apparently, the four major vaccine makers – Sanofi Pasteur, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune – are not detered by last year’s glu and decided to increase production.

[source: CIDRAP; image]

Tags: vaccines, supply, 2007-2008 flu season

Post from: Blisstree

Will 132 million flu vaccines be enough next season?

Daniels has what the World Health O. dubbed as XDR-TB, or extremely drug resistant tuberculosis , which is virtually untreatable using current anti-TB drugs. Daniels was considered “uncooperative and a danger to the public” and was ordered locked up because he did not take precautions to avoid infecting others or even to wear a mask in public. Although currently rare in the US, XDR-TB broke out in Africa last year with an alarmingly high mortality rate. XDR-TB is transmitted the same as other forms of tuberculosis – by aerosol droplets expelled by an infection person with a cough, sneeze, kiss, spit, or sharing of utensils.

Now, though TB is a bacterial infection (and technically not a “concern” of this blog), INFLUENZA has the potential of becoming drug-resistant** as well.

In the face of increasing use (and misuse) of flu drugs, the potential of developing drug-resistant flu viruses, the problem of containing H5N1 across much of Asia, and likened to the days when the world dealt with smallpox and leprosy, once again we face the the issue of dealing with infected persons with untreatable symptoms.

Putting people and whole villages quarantined have been in practice and found highly effective. But as H5N1 spreads to less isolated cities and across nations, it is getting much harder to control the transmission of flu viruses.

Now, I have no answers to the issues/questions below, but I pose them because I myself am looking for more concrete solutions to the global health threat of a drug-resistant influenza/bird flu/pandemic flu/ virus.

1. Should uncooperative contagious persons (as Daniels was charged) be locked up?

2. What needs to be done about infected persons wishing to travel? Do airlines or cruise ships have the right to refuse a sick person from boarding? Should there be an international law to govern the travel of contagious persons sick with life-threatening diseases?

3. How long should a quarantine (or shelter-in-place) last? A survey last year posed that Americans will only stay home 7 days at the most in the event of a flu pandemic. The need to work is the top reason for not staying home. Will this number of days be enough?

4. What kind of regulations should there be in place to prevent the overuse of drugs that may cause resistance?

Certainly, there are more questions than the above, but if you have answers or ideas or more questions, feel free to fill the comment and begin a discussion.

**The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported last year that 92% of influenza A (H3N2) viruses isolated from patients demonstrated an amino acid change that confers resistance to adamantanes. Two of eight type A flu viruses were in fact resistant. Canadian authorities report the same mutations in isolates recently tested. These findings prompted the CDC to recommend against the use of amantadanes for flu treatment last season. In addition, a small study of Japanese children treated with oseltamivir also reported a high frequency of resistant viruses. However, no transmission of neuraminidase inhibitor-resistant viruses in humans has been documented to date.

[Source: MSNBC; image]

Tags: drug-resistance, XDR-TB, tuberculosis, influenza, bird flu, pandemic, oseltamivir, adamantanes, world health, virus, viral disease, viral illness

Post from: Blisstree

Drug-resistant TB patient quarantined for life… and what this means for bird flu

Today, Japan took that warning one step further and ordered doctors not to give Tamiflu to teenagers, after a total of 15 teens taking the drug either killed or injured themselves since 2004. In the past two months alone, two 12-year old boys taking Tamiflu jumped out of their houses in separate incidents. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also reported that it received more than 100 cases of delirium, hallucinations and other unusual psychiatric behavior, mostly in Japanese children treated with Tamiflu, in the last two years.

However, Swiss drug-maker Roche still denies any causal relationship between their flu drug and psychiatric symptoms, even though ads that I saw on TV for the drug carry warnings that such abnormal behavior could occur.

As a parent, I would heed this warning seriously and NOT give Tamiflu to my children, and maybe even think twice about taking it myself. But as a scientist, I do want to see solid proof that there is a link, and the first questions I asked myself -

1. Why only in Japan? Isn’t Tamiflu already in use in most other Asian countries with bird flu outbreaks? I haven’t heard reports yet on cases outside of Japan, or in the United States.

2. Both Roche and the FDA also know that abnormal behavior may be displayed by patients with severe flu symptoms, but is there data to suggest that those taking Tamiflu have higher risk?

3. And if there is no causal relationship, as Roche suggests, what other possible interacton might Tamilfu have with neuropyschiatric behavior that’s triggered by influenza?

This drug is still the most effective treatment we have around at the moment, so it’s important for the the U.S. health department to come up with some good answers as quickly as possible.

[News Source: China Post]

Tags: Tamiflu, suicide, flu drug, Roche, FDA, Japan

Post from: Blisstree

Is Tamiflu linked to Japanese teen suicides?

Seventeen police officers from the same district in Buffalo, New York called in sick in a two-day stretch. In four other districts, 26 officers called in sick during the same period. A spokesman for the Police Benevolent Association said the officers called in sick they were sick.

So is there a flu epidemic running amok in the Buffalo area?

The mayor’s office didn’t think so. Looking more like the ‘blue flu’, Mayor Byron Brown warned police officers of falsely calling out sick for work while rumors of a job action swirled last week. Police have been unhappy with a 3-year old wage freeze.

[source:SignonSanDiego]

Tags: flu, blue flu, police, New York

Post from: Blisstree

A flu epidemic hits Buffalo, NY police?

The federal Food and Drug Administration set an annual expiration date for destroying unused vaccines so the recipe for each new flu season only includes the three strains causing the most cases. No one has tested if the vaccines are potent beyond the June 30 date, but scientists say that most vaccines degrade slowly and are stable for another year or two, therefore still useful. Lawmakers have arguing that these vaccines should be kept until new doses are at hand, or donate the surplus to poor countries. Besides, destroying the vaccines before the summer deprives travelers of flu shots before they visit places where flu is in season. It also prevents summer vaccination for children needing a second dose.

However, I can imagine how much of a pain it will be to manage mixed batches of vaccines. And an old vaccine may also not get one the necessary immunity against the currently circulating flu strains.

Well, what do you think? Should we dump this year’s supplies of vaccines, or recycle them?

[Sources: journalnow.com; image]

Tags: flu, vaccines, FDA, medicine, health, virus, illness

Post from: Blisstree

Destruction of unused flu shots criticized

That’s the question that the Food and Drug Administration staff are asking themselves about Sanofi Aventis’ new bird flu vaccine. The FDA will meet on Tuesday to weigh approval of a bird flu vaccine that is less effective than previously published. In a follow up clinical trial, Sanofi’s two-shot vaccine stimulated an immune response in only 45 percent of study participants. Last March, published results showed that the vaccine protected 54 percent of patients, when tested a month after getting the second shot.

In an email response (to Bloomberg), Sanofi spokesman Len Lavenda said “no studies have been designed to actually measure protection since there is no widespread circulation of disease”.

So, we’ll know tomorrow whether the US has a new bird flu vaccine, and if the government is willing to take its chances at 50-50.

[Source: Sanofi Bird-Flu Shot's Benefit Isn't Clear, FDA Says]

[Image]

Tags: flu, bird flu, vaccine, Sanofi Aventis, FDA

Post from: Blisstree

FDA questions effectiveness of new bird flu vaccine