ViroBlogy

From News24 this evening:

SA’s H1N1 deaths now 27

2009-09-01 17:03

Cape Town – The number of swine flu deaths in South Africa has risen to 27, and confirmed infections to 5 841, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases said on Tuesday.

“There is also ongoing and widespread community transmission,” it said in a statement.

Of the 27 fatal cases, 12 were pregnant women, five of whom had no identified underlying conditions.

The institute repeated its standard warning that people with depressed immunity, asthma, diabetes, or chronic lung, kidney and heart problems, or who were pregnant should seek early treatment with antivirals.

and on 26th August:

SA wants own H1N1 flu vaccine

2009-08-26 22:29

Cape Town – South Africa has no choice but to develop its own H1N1 flu vaccine, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said on Wednesday, citing concerns treatment will not be available to poorer nations.

“South Africa has arrived at a situation where we have no option but to start developing our own vaccine capacity, not only for H1N1, but generally,” Motsoaledi told parliament.

“The disturbing feature about today’s world… has been expressed by the minister of health for Cambodia… who noted that the developed world, after producing the vaccine, may want to cover their own population first before thinking about the developing world,” Motsoaledi said.

Anyone remember reading that before, anywhere?  Watch this space….

Tags: Influenza, South Africa, vaccine

This entry was posted on 1 September, 2009 at 19:09 and is filed under General Virology, Influenza viruses, Vaccines: General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.