Friday, May 29, 2009

Swine flu - an invisible pandemic sneaking up on an unsuspecting world

SHOOT: I believe history will show that too many were complacent, including scientists, the media, and health authorities. We live in a world with too much noise clouding out the signals. Of course, this is no excuse. Failure to discern reality is an expensive lesson to learn.
Russian scientists are trying to create a vaccine against swine flu in the Flu Scientific Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences in St Petersburg (Image: KPA / Zuma / Rex Features)

Hospitals in Greece have identified H1N1 swine flu in two students who had no contact with known cases of the virus and had not been in countries with widespread infection. The infections were discovered even though the students should not have been tested for swine flu under European rules. The Greek authorities say this shows the rules must change.

Indeed, an investigation by New Scientist earlier this month showed that the EU rules would exclude exactly such cases and could make H1N1 appear much less widespread in Europe than it is.

Takis Panagiotopoulos of the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Athens and colleagues reported on 28 May in Eurosurveillance, a weekly bulletin published by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm, Sweden, that two Greek men returning home from Scotland had tested positive this week for H1N1 swine flu.

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