News Reports for June 24, 2012

2009 influenza H1N1 under control in Thailand's northeast

NAKHON RATCHASIMA, June 21 - The 2009 influenza H1N1 situation is now under control and no more patients have been found affected with the virus, according to Nakhon Ratchasima Rajanagarindra Psychiatric Hospital (Snip)

Forty-one people were confirmed Wednesday as being infected with 2009 influenza H1N1 in this northeastern province. Most of them have improved conditions, he said The patients were given Tamiflu (Snip) and have been under quarantine for 14 days.

About one-third of the hospital's staff (out of 350) have already received an injection for flu prevention. Anybody with a temperature higher than 38 degrees will be sent for a thorough and immediate medical checkup.

(Snip) deputy director of Maharat Nakhon Ratchasima Hospital, said the 41 patients at the other hospital have responded well to the Tamiflu treatment. (Snip) http://www.pattayamail.com/new...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sun Jun 24, 2012 at 05:56:09 AM UTC

Australia: Landmark flu vaccine study to test babies' protection

THOUSANDS of mothers will be surveyed over the next four years in a landmark study to find out whether the flu vaccine can help protect babies from the virus in their first year of life. Women will fill out a survey after giving birth and will be interviewed by telephone when their child is six months old to compare the health of newborns with mothers who were vaccinated in the previous year with those whose mothers were not.

Six universities - including the University of Melbourne - have begun recruiting 10,000 pregnant women at hospitals, maternity units and clinics in Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth for the ''Flumum'' study, which is an Australian first and the largest of its kind in the world. An equivalent US study found that flu vaccines could help immunise babies under six months old but surveyed only about 300 mothers over a shorter time, and did not follow up on every child after birth.

Among children, babies younger than 12 months were most likely to contract influenza, said Professor Terry Nolan, head of Melbourne University's Murdoch Children's Research Institute and School of Population Health. But the flu vaccine is only licensed for children older than a year. ''[The study will] tell us [if] there's a benefit in the most vulnerable group for which we have no current intervention available,'' Professor Nolan said. ''We already know what the benefits are for the mother ... [but] it adds weight to the argument that it's a good thing for pregnant women to be vaccinated against flu for themselves and also for their babies.''

The study, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, also aims to uncover reasons why women choose to be vaccinated.

The national immunisation handbook, written by the advisory group that Professor Nolan chairs, has recommended for the past decade that pregnant women be vaccinated for flu. But only 30 to 40 per cent of pregnant women take the vaccine, compared with about 10 per cent before the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009. Continued: http://www.canberratimes.com.a...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sun Jun 24, 2012 at 06:05:17 AM UTC

Malaysia: Two NS trainees still warded with H1N1

KUALA LUMPUR: Only two of the 18 National Service (NS) Training Programme trainees who were treated for influenza A (H1N1) (Snip) are still warded in hospital (Snip) the other 16 trainees had recovered and had returned to their respective training camps to continue with their normal training.

"We always monitor the condition of the training camps from time to time to ensure that they are free of the H1N1 virus," (Snip)

On June 13, 18 trainees of the Dusun Resort camp, Kuala Nerang, Kedah were admitted to the Kuala Nerang hospital for influenze A viral infection while another 78 were quarantined in a special block of the camp as they had shown symptoms of the H1N1 infection. http://thestar.com.my/news/sto...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sun Jun 24, 2012 at 18:50:24 PM UTC

Clinical Notes: Bird Flu Grows Scarier

It would not take many genetic changes to turn bird flu into a catastrophic human killer, researchers confirmed. (Snip)

Bird Flu Could Easily Become Pandemic

Only a few mutations stand between current strains of H5N1 avian influenza and a virus that could easily pass between humans, potentially killing hundreds of millions of people, researchers said.
(Snip)
Fouchier and colleagues determined that five mutations in a H5N1 bird flu isolate made it highly transmissible in mammals via airborne droplets.

Another group of researchers, also writing in Science last week, said they had found H5N1 strains in poultry that already carried two of the mutations identified by Fouchier's team, meaning that only three more were needed to create a potential worldwide catastrophe. (Snip) http://www.medpagetoday.com/He...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sun Jun 24, 2012 at 18:55:24 PM UTC

Please post new news stories to...

News Reports for June 25, 2012

Thank you!

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by: AlohaOR @ Mon Jun 25, 2012 at 04:31:29 AM UTC