How is the world ever going to agree on a strategy for fighting climate change when it can't even co-ordinate its response to swine flu? One might assume that a virus that's been involved in the deaths of 5,700 people is an easier threat to contain than the noxious gases oozing in to the atmosphere.
A total of 78,000 new cases of the H1N1 virus were reported in England last week. Among them was my three-year-old son. Our local doctor prescribed a half dose of Tamiflu. Unlike paracetamol and ibuprofen, Tamiflu doesn't come in strawberry or orange flavour so we mixed it into a bowl of ice cream. Within half an hour, he vomited. Later in the day we tried accompanying the medication with a heaped teaspoon of honey with the same result. Rather belatedly, we were told that many children under five can't tolerate Tamiflu.
Instead, every four hours for six days we gave him a cocktail of over-the-counter paracetamol and ibuprofen while suffering through the sobbing desperation (of parents and child) that comes when you 're forced to plunge your child into a cool bath. If we were in Australia, this whole drama might have been avoided because our whole family would have been vaccinated by now. Australia was among the first countries to introduce the mass vaccination program.
The World Health Organisation and most health authorities around the globe are urging people to get vaccinated. The problem is that there's not enough of the stuff to go around and drug companies aren't exactly accelerating the costly manufacture of speedy supplies. In the UK, the vaccine has been rationed and is doled out only to those deemed "at risk". Once our son was diagnosed with the illness, my husband and I thought that our family might fall in to that category. We were wrong.
Australia has enough doses of vaccine to cover the entire population. Of the 137 British swine flu related deaths since April, one in three were not in the priority group for vaccination. The government has ordered enough doses to cover the entire population but if everyone showed up at an NHS hospital demanding to be immunised, they'd be overwhelmed. At best, Britain hopes to inoculate 15 per cent of the country this year. You need to have lived in Britain or have watched the Little Britain TV series to understand why this is so. The computer says no.
Terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba are being vaccinated, but my 22 month old lives in the UK so she's not eligible and neither is my five-year-old even though children under the age of 15 now account for a fifth of all swine flu hospital admissions in Britain. According to the National Health Service, young children are not "at risk". Who exactly is most at risk is still up for debate. There is some evidence today in the Journal of the American Medical Association that among the highest risk factors is obesity. Will the World Health Organisation now advise that people who are overweight jump the vaccine queue?
The UK's chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson said that the situation was "eerily similar" to Australia where similar numbers were in intensive care units during their flu season .. so how do you explain the different tact in vaccination programs?
Perhaps there's a political edge to this. In July, the US President, Barack Obama promised to have 160 million doses of H1N1 vaccine ready for distribution by the end of October.
Instead, only 28 million doses are now available to protect a population 10 times that size. Barack Obama has declared a national emergency but isn't swine flu, like climate change, an international emergency like climate change?
Like so much that goes wrong in government policy, this one has the stamp of a failed public private partnership. Entrusting the private sector to take care of public health doesn't look like a good idea because economics can get in the way of common sense. Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second biggest pharmaceutical company, has reported much higher than expected profits. The chief executive announced that since the discovery of swine flu, sales of influenza products had contributed "significantly" to the results. Demand for their vaccine is outstripping supply and in economics that's an enviable position for a company to be in.
But vaccines are not a profitable business. Big Pharma is not known for its charitable endeavours and certainly wouldn't change its manufacturing regime if it had an adverse impact on earnings. There is a way to speed up the production of flu-vaccines by switching to cell-based methods. This is an expensive alternative and would need to involve political interference because it's also time consuming and not particularly profitable.
Ninety-odd years after the H1N1 pandemic that killed tens of millions around the world, most approved flu-vaccine producers still "grow" the vaccine in eggs. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention calls that method "outdated". In other parts of the medical establishment it's been referred to as "antiquated". When you need vaccine quickly, this process can't deliver. On the other hand, cell-based vaccine production is quick and could have ensured mass coverage by now
For all the talk of pandemics and national emergencies, neither governments nor the World Health Organisation seem able or inclined to speed up the vaccine production process. So six months after the first deaths from swine flu in the UK, the advice is the same: put your hands over your mouth when you cough, throw your tissues in the bin and wash your hands. Oh, and pray that the vaccination program catches up to you before the virus does.
A total of 78,000 new cases of the H1N1 virus were reported in England last week. Among them was my three-year-old son. Our local doctor prescribed a half dose of Tamiflu. Unlike paracetamol and ibuprofen, Tamiflu doesn't come in strawberry or orange flavour so we mixed it into a bowl of ice cream. Within half an hour, he vomited. Later in the day we tried accompanying the medication with a heaped teaspoon of honey with the same result. Rather belatedly, we were told that many children under five can't tolerate Tamiflu.
Instead, every four hours for six days we gave him a cocktail of over-the-counter paracetamol and ibuprofen while suffering through the sobbing desperation (of parents and child) that comes when you 're forced to plunge your child into a cool bath. If we were in Australia, this whole drama might have been avoided because our whole family would have been vaccinated by now. Australia was among the first countries to introduce the mass vaccination program.
The World Health Organisation and most health authorities around the globe are urging people to get vaccinated. The problem is that there's not enough of the stuff to go around and drug companies aren't exactly accelerating the costly manufacture of speedy supplies. In the UK, the vaccine has been rationed and is doled out only to those deemed "at risk". Once our son was diagnosed with the illness, my husband and I thought that our family might fall in to that category. We were wrong.
Australia has enough doses of vaccine to cover the entire population. Of the 137 British swine flu related deaths since April, one in three were not in the priority group for vaccination. The government has ordered enough doses to cover the entire population but if everyone showed up at an NHS hospital demanding to be immunised, they'd be overwhelmed. At best, Britain hopes to inoculate 15 per cent of the country this year. You need to have lived in Britain or have watched the Little Britain TV series to understand why this is so. The computer says no.
Terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba are being vaccinated, but my 22 month old lives in the UK so she's not eligible and neither is my five-year-old even though children under the age of 15 now account for a fifth of all swine flu hospital admissions in Britain. According to the National Health Service, young children are not "at risk". Who exactly is most at risk is still up for debate. There is some evidence today in the Journal of the American Medical Association that among the highest risk factors is obesity. Will the World Health Organisation now advise that people who are overweight jump the vaccine queue?
The UK's chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson said that the situation was "eerily similar" to Australia where similar numbers were in intensive care units during their flu season .. so how do you explain the different tact in vaccination programs?
Perhaps there's a political edge to this. In July, the US President, Barack Obama promised to have 160 million doses of H1N1 vaccine ready for distribution by the end of October.
Instead, only 28 million doses are now available to protect a population 10 times that size. Barack Obama has declared a national emergency but isn't swine flu, like climate change, an international emergency like climate change?
Like so much that goes wrong in government policy, this one has the stamp of a failed public private partnership. Entrusting the private sector to take care of public health doesn't look like a good idea because economics can get in the way of common sense. Britain's GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second biggest pharmaceutical company, has reported much higher than expected profits. The chief executive announced that since the discovery of swine flu, sales of influenza products had contributed "significantly" to the results. Demand for their vaccine is outstripping supply and in economics that's an enviable position for a company to be in.
But vaccines are not a profitable business. Big Pharma is not known for its charitable endeavours and certainly wouldn't change its manufacturing regime if it had an adverse impact on earnings. There is a way to speed up the production of flu-vaccines by switching to cell-based methods. This is an expensive alternative and would need to involve political interference because it's also time consuming and not particularly profitable.
Ninety-odd years after the H1N1 pandemic that killed tens of millions around the world, most approved flu-vaccine producers still "grow" the vaccine in eggs. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention calls that method "outdated". In other parts of the medical establishment it's been referred to as "antiquated". When you need vaccine quickly, this process can't deliver. On the other hand, cell-based vaccine production is quick and could have ensured mass coverage by now
For all the talk of pandemics and national emergencies, neither governments nor the World Health Organisation seem able or inclined to speed up the vaccine production process. So six months after the first deaths from swine flu in the UK, the advice is the same: put your hands over your mouth when you cough, throw your tissues in the bin and wash your hands. Oh, and pray that the vaccination program catches up to you before the virus does.
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