All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page. These regular updates on The Great Beyond round up the latest from other news sources around the globe.
New guidelines put out by the World Health Organization last week declared that healthy people who contract H1N1 do not need antiviral drugs. This stance appears to put the WHO at odds with the current policies of a number of countries.
“Worldwide, most patients infected with the pandemic virus continue to experience typical influenza symptoms and fully recover within a week, even without any form of medical treatment,” says the WHO. “Healthy patients with uncomplicated illness need not be treated with antivirals.”
Patients who present with severe illness or who get rapidly worse should be given oseltamivir (Tamiflu), as should children under five, according to the new guidelines.
Many country’s policies appear to differ from the WHO. The US Centers for Disease Control’s website currently states, “CDC recommends the use of oseltamivir or zanamivir for the treatment and/or prevention of infection with swine influenza viruses.”
A spokesperson for the UK government – which currently makes Tamiflu available to all those suspected of having H1N1 – insisted its policy was in line with the WHO. “We have consistently said that many people with swine flu only get mild symptoms, and they may find bed rest and over-the-counter flu remedies work for them,” they told the Daily Telegraph.
Earlier this month a paper suggesting that it might not be necessary to give Tamiflu to children also picked up a lot of coverage (see: Swine flu: Tamiflu for children? – August 11, 2009).
Last week the CDC produced its recommendations on who should receive vaccination against H1N1 when a vaccine does become available.
Amidst all of this, a sizable percentage of informed people seem to not want either drugs or vaccination, even if they do qualify. In the UK two new straw polls of doctors working in primary health care found that only around half would accept a vaccine shot.
Image: word cloud generated from WHO recommendations with Wordle