Pandemic Flu Has the World on Alert

PARIS news updates: The first flu pandemic of the 21st century, swine flu, has been less deadly than feared since it emerged this year but has taken an unusually high toll among the world’s young, leaving thousands dead.

The A(H1N1) virus was identified for the first time at the end of March in Mexico and quickly spread, with the World Health Organisation declaring a global pandemic on June 11.

The WHO estimated that by early December the global death toll had passed 9,500 but experts warned that it was too early to give an accurate estimate.

The world was mobilised into action with vaccination and awareness campaigns.

China, for example, had vaccinated more than 31 million people against the virus by early December with the aim of reaching up to 65 million by the end of the year.

“It is the first time that we have dealt with such a problem at a global level,” said Sylvie Briand, a doctor who heads the WHO’s Global Influenza Programme.

“This mobilisation has mainly allowed use to put vaccines in place in record time,” she said.

The WHO has also recommended the use of the drug Tamiflu in high-risk swine flu patients to reduce and prevent complications and even death.

Two-thirds of Canada’s roughly 200 fatal cases this winter had an underlying chronic illness such as asthma, cardiac disease, immunosuppression and diabetes, the world body has said.

A feature of swine flu has been the heavy toll it has exacted on younger populations.

The United States’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the country’s death toll at nearly 10,000 by mid-November, higher than the WHO estimate, with 1,100 of the dead children and 7,500 young adults.

There had been around 50 million cases most of them in younger adults and children, it said.

“It is not a slaughter but this pandemic has caused unusual mortality in the young, including those who have been in good health,” said a French expert, Professor Antoine Flahaut.

Added Briand: “Unlike in seasonal viruses, the pandemic virus penetrates deep inside the lungs and causes symptoms of respiratory distress more acute in young subjects.”

Pregnant women and the obese have been found to be particularly vulnerable to the new virus. People older than 65 appear to have less chance of catching it but if they do, they run more risk of dying.

“Clearly we do not have a case of a virus as deadly as the bird flu one,” WHO doctor Isabelle Nuttall told AFP, though the overall death toll is greater.

The ratio of deaths to infections for the present A(H1N1) has been below that of the 2003 outbreak of H5N1 bird flu — which struck mainly in Asia and killed almost 60 percent of those it infected, the toll reaching more than 260 people, according to WHO figures.

The world was also hit by an outbreak of another deadly virus, SARS or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, in 2002 to 2003 that killed 774 people, WHO figures show.

In Britain, the number of people infected with the current swine flu who died has been “considerably” less than had been feared at the start of the outbreak, at 0.026 percent, according to a study directed government health adviser Liam Donaldson.

It was also much lower than in previous flu outbreaks in 1918 (two to three percent) or in 1957-58 and 1967-68 (about 0.2 percent), according to the study released early December.

This could be explained by the use of antiviral and antibiotic treatments, vaccines, medical progress and resuscitation.

But flu viruses are unpredictable, said Nuttall. “We must remain vigilant and not lower our guard,” she said.

Fidel Castro Dead

Fidel Castro Dead: On July 27, 2006, Fidel Castro nearly died during emergency intestinal surgery to stem internal bleeding caused by chronic diverticulitis. Since then, Cuba-watchers and obituary writers have been on high alert awaiting his demise.
Fidel Castro DeadYet, more than three years later, Castro soldiers on, approaching his mortal end with the same zeal he lavished on his life. The 83-year-old appears to have adjusted to his medically mandated retirement, enduring various surgeries and their attendant complications. A state-of-the art convalescent suite has been installed in his principal residence, Punto Cero, where he is surrounded by family and Cuba’s finest doctors. On his good days, he entertains well-wishers — among them, Harry Belafonte and Oliver Stone. And he continues to intervene in the thorny politics of Cuba.

In 2007, while still hospitalised, Castro began a transition from being Cuba’s commander in chief to its pundit in chief, penning columns he calls ‘Reflections’ in the state-run newspaper, Granma. Late last year, he offered some personal introspection. “I have had the rare privilege of observing events for a very long time,” he wrote. He then acknowledged the gravity of his illness. “I do not expect I shall enjoy such a privilege four years from now — when President [Barack] Obama’s first term has concluded.”

But until Castro is in the grave, we will be hearing from him. While his brother Raul and the Cuban army are running the day-to-day affairs of the country, Castro retains and exercises veto power. And Cubans continue to feel the strongman’s sting.

In March, more than a dozen of the most senior members of the Cuban regime were purged from the government. While Raul Castro had initiated the internal coup, Fidel was quick to weigh in and assail its casualties, all former members of his inner circle. The men had succumbed to “the honey of power,” he wrote in his column.

Castro’s reluctant leave-taking — with its periodic near-finales — fits into a long tradition of Hispanic caudillos or dictators. Consider, for example, the life — and death — of Francisco Franco, Spain’s dictator of almost 40 years. Both Castro’s father and Franco hailed from the rugged northern countryside of Spain, a region renowned for its fierce and stubborn citizenry. And notwithstanding divergent political ideologies — Franco was a zealous anti-communist — the two men had a good deal in common. Both were willing to forge unpalatable and unpopular alliances with totalitarian states to shore up their power — Franco with Nazi Germany and Castro with the Soviet Union.

And Franco’s shrouded last days neatly foreshadowed Castro’s. Franco became grievously ill in 1974 and was forced to turn over his rule — “temporarily,” he insisted — to Prince Juan Carlos. Castro also initially ceded control to his brother only “temporarily”. Like Castro, Franco had an unexpected recovery, although his lasted only a year before he died at 82.

Although it is generally believed that Franco died days earlier, his death was announced on November 20, 1975, the same day on which Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Franco’s fascist Falange party, died 40 years earlier.

Some people assert doctors kept Franco alive under orders from the dictator that he would live until the ordained date.

Castro’s untidy leaving has kept the news media in an indefinite state of high alert, as they formulate and reformulate coverage and obituaries. The veteran Spanish Civil War reporter Martha Gellhorn found herself in a similar pickle three decades ago. In 1975, she accepted an assignment from New York magazine to write about post-Franco Spain. “This thrills me, the sort of journalism I love,” she wrote her son. “I am waiting for the old swine to die; but obviously he is being kept breathing [no more] while the right tightens its hold on the country.”

When I asked Castro in a 1994 interview when he would retire, he snapped: “My vocation is the revolution. I am a revolutionary, and revolutionaries do not retire.”

Bardach is the author of Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington and serves on the Brookings Institution’s Cuba Study Project. Thanks to gulfnews.com