Back in January, our newsletter’s MediaWatch section included a story on the dangers of scrubs as fashion statement.

This past weekend, the CBC’s Sunday Edition ran their coverage of this story:

We all know hospitals are dangerous places, literally crawling with dangerous bugs. In fact, around 8,000 Canadians a year die of infections caused by microbes such as C.Difficile which pollute hospital emergency wards, treatment rooms and patients’ rooms. But what can happen when all those hospital bugs begin turning up in coffee shops, on public transit, or even grocery stores carried by hospital personnel wearing their green scrubs, their uniforms, outside the hospital?

Listen to their coverage (in hour 2) here.

Govt urged to flout EU rules during pandemic

EU rules which say doctors can only work 48 hours a week should be suspended during the swine flu crisis, say health experts.

Doctors’ group RemedyUK fears it will further burden an already overstretched NHS. It wants special measures to bypass the reduced working week, which begins for junior doctors on Saturday.

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The Royal College of Surgeons has also urged the Government to ditch the European Working Time Directive if the situation gets worse.

Full Article: here.

>>Cities slam Ottawa for poor pandemic planning

A lapse in federal leadership has left the country with no plan to keep essential services going if pandemic influenza becomes more deadly this fall, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities warns.

“The global outbreak of the H1N1 virus has exposed a serious gap in the federal government’s overall pandemic preparedness strategy,” Basil Stewart, the president of the federation, writes in an open letter sent Monday to federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq.

“Currently, there is neither a national plan, nor guidelines in place, to help cities and communities protect critical front-line workers such as police, firefighters, public transit operators, water and wastewater workers and municipal public-health professionals. This puts at risk the critical services that provide the foundation for effective pandemic response measures.”

Full Article: here.

>>Tamiflu approved for Canadian babies

Canadian infants under one year old who are sick with the flu may receive the antiviral drug Tamiflu, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced Thursday under new swine flu pandemic guidelines.

The Public Health Agency of Canada prepared the interim guidance to help doctors treating infants with influenza-like illness during the H1N1 pandemic.

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“Although there are limited data supporting the use of Tamiflu in children under one, there now exists an urgent need for recommendations to treat this population, given this group’s increased risk for morbidity and mortality from influenza,” the agency said on its website.

Full Article: here.

>>Flu pandemic planning underway

Many businesses in Canada developed plans following the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002 and the emergence and spread of the avian flu, and those have been pulled from the shelves and dusted off since the swine-flu outbreak started in late April.

Those plans are now being tested and companies are determining how they can be applied to the swine-flu pandemic that has made more than 10,000 Canadians sick.

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Bell Canada, for example, a company that has had two employees confirmed with swine flu, started developing a pandemic plan about three years ago and activated it in the spring when swine flu began to emerge. Adjustments, however, had to be made.

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Communication with employees is central to all the plans, said Michelis, and to that end Bell has been keeping staff up-to-date through internal e-mails and a pandemic website. It has also put up posters in company washrooms about proper hygiene and provided hand sanitizers. The company plans to host flu-shot clinics in the fall for its 42,000 employees.

Bell’s business is designated by the government as part of the country’s critical infrastructure and, as such, the company must have an emergency management plan, under which its pandemic plan falls.

Full Article: here.

>>Flu death toll at 700, school closures an option-WHO

The H1N1 virus has killed more than 700 people worldwide since emerging in April, and countries could consider closing schools to slow its spread, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.
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Some 125,000 laboratory-confirmed cases have been reported worldwide as of Tuesday, Bhatiasevi told Reuters.

Full Article: here.

>>Firms need pandemic crisis plan, report says

Amid reports of H1N1 virus outbreaks at summer camps and the prospect things could get worse this fall, more companies are being warned they need to prepare for a possible pandemic.

The Conference Board of Canada issued a report yesterday urging organizations of all kinds to act while they still have time.

Full Article: here.

>>WHO stops giving global swine flu tally

Swine flu is moving around the globe at “unprecedented speed,” the World Health Organisation said Friday, as it stopped giving figures on the numbers affected worldwide.

The WHO said in an information note on its website Friday that it would focus on regular updates from newly affected countries, in order to keep track of the global progress of the new influenza A(H1N1) pandemic.

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The agency said the counting of all individual cases was no longer essential to assess the risk from swine flu, so it was best to watch the virus’s appearance in new territories.

Full Article: here.

>>Argentina declares emergency after flu found in pigs

Argentina’s government declared on Friday a national sanitary emergency due to the presence of the new H1N1 flu virus in pigs.

Earlier this month, animal health officials said workers at a pig farm in Buenos Aires province were suspected of having passed the new strain onto the animals.

Source: here.

>>U.K. Plans Massive Swine-Flu Vaccination

The medical establishment in Britain, the nation hardest hit by swine flu outside North America, is scrambling to roll out a large-scale vaccination program in an effort to protect its population against a virus that threatens to spread rapidly here in coming weeks.

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The number of cases in the U.K. is several times greater than in any other European country. Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, says the U.K. has been hit hard because many Britons were traveling to Mexico and the U.S. when the virus first appeared there.

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The country has ordered enough vaccine to cover all 60 million of its residents. The government plans to offer everyone free shots as soon as they become available”.

Full Article: here.

>>Swine flu in winter ‘for a third’

A third of the population may catch swine flu this winter and the virus could be here for up to five years, the government’s medical chief has warned.

But Sir Liam Donaldson told the BBC the deaths of people with no apparent health problems did not mean the virus was becoming more severe.
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Sir Liam, who is chief medical officer for England, said it was “too early to say” whether a mortality rate of one in 200 – as suggested by some experts – was accurate.

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Between 30 to 35% of people could come down with the virus this winter, he said. The disease was also likely to strike again in the years that followed.

Full Article: here.

Study: 1918 flu survivors seem immune to swine flu

The way swine flu multiplies in the respiratory system is more severe than ordinary winter flu, a new study in animals finds.

Tests in monkeys, mice and ferrets show that the swine flu thrives in greater numbers all over the respiratory system, including the lungs, and causes lesions, instead of staying in the nose and throat like seasonal flu.

In addition, blood tests show that many people who were born before the 1918 flu pandemic seem to have immunity to the current swine flu, but not to the seasonal flu that hits every year.

Full Article: here.

>>CDC: U.S. may need 600 million swine flu vaccine doses

Questions abound about how to best inoculate the world against swine flu as health officials plan for a campaign that could dwarf any previous flu vaccination effort.

Among the issues to be resolved are the amount of vaccine likely to be available, the timing of the vaccine’s availability, how it would be distributed, who would provide the shots, who would pay for them and whether it will be possible to track potential side effects.

At a recent meeting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, health officials said U.S. demand could reach 600 million doses of vaccine, enough for two doses for each of the approximate 300 million people in the United States. That’s in case two doses are required for children and adults under 50, CDC representatives said.

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Small studies in ferrets at the CDC suggest that when compared with seasonal flu, the virus appears to cause more severe disease but also seems to spread less easily.

Full Article: here.

>>UN chief: $1 billion needed against swine flu

The United Nations may need more than $1 billion this year to help poor countries fight the swine flu pandemic, the world body’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

“The funding has not been flowing as we have been expecting,” Ban said. “We are now mobilizing all resources possible.”

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“Many of the developing countries have weak health systems,” said Chan. “They actually go into this pandemic what I call empty-handed. They don’t have antivirals. They don’t have vaccines. They don’t have antibiotics.”

Full Article: here.

>>Harry Potter actor tells of swine flu fear

Actor Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, spoke Monday of his fears after contracting swine flu, saying he initially thought he might die.

Grint described contracting the A(H1N1) virus, which has spread around the world, as “quite scary” but he recovered after spending a few days in bed.

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The 20-year-old’s publicist confirmed on Saturday that he had suffered from the virus, taking several days off filming the next movie in the blockbuster series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

Full Article: here.