I DON?T think the local media would be content until someone in the country actually dies from A(H1N1) flu.
Amid reports of new cases, with news that the Philippines currently has the highest number of A(H1N1) cases in Southeast Asia, local media are all agog searching for new sites of contagion and escalating risks. Even when Health Secretary Francisco Duque assures that all cases detected in the country so far have been ?mild,? with no fatality and with most patients recovering after three days of treatment, TV and radio reporters and commentators insist on ratcheting up the alarm level, implying health authorities are either much too complacent or are covering up the ?real? extent of this health threat.
Actually, as Duque has pointed out, Filipinos have far more to worry about health than a new strain of flu virus. One of these is dengue, which has been around for decades and has actually been killing individuals. The disease afflicts most anyone, regardless of economic or social standing, as the recent illness of Kris Aquino?s sons demonstrated.
But dengue is old news, while A(H1N1) flu is still sexy and exciting. And so we are ?treated? each evening to footage of panic-stricken parents, children wearing face masks, and schools and colleges supposedly besieged by the threat of a novel strain of flu virus.
One amusing report concerned a private school in Parańaque where a student had tested positive for the new flu virus. The principal of a neighboring school was caught on camera expressing concern about his students getting infected ?since our school is just next door.? Will someone please tell him that A(H1N1) flu is spread through droplets in the air expelled by persons infected by the virus when they sneeze, cough or touch others. The virus is not airborne, at least not through great distances. So while one could be infected by sitting in close proximity with an infected person in enclosed quarters, such as in an airplane, you can?t get infected by going to a nearby school or standing under the same sky.
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An article in the New York Times by Donald McNeil Jr. says that A(H1N1) flu has caused mostly ?mild? illnesses so far and ?scientists looking at its genetic structure says there is no obvious pressure? for the virus to mutate into something more lethal, that is to start killing more of its human hosts.
?It is already doing a near-perfect job of keeping itself alive by invading human noses and inducing humans to cough it from one to another,? says Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University?s Mailman School of Public Health. A really aggressive flu that quickly kills its host, such as SARS and H5N1 avian flu ?gives itself a problem,? says Lipkin.
We need to remember, though, that flu viruses are ?highly mutable,? and, says McNeil, ?anything could happen in the next two years, the time a new strain normally takes to circle the globe.? The World Health Organization has already declared a ?global pandemic? of A(H1N1) flu, but experts don?t think the novel virus could reach the same level of virulence as the Spanish flu (a strain of avian influenza) that began as a mild strain but ended up killing 20-100 million people in a year?s time. That, said another expert, was a ?once-a-millennium or once-every-10-millennia event.?
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One reason relatively few people have been dying from A(H1N1) flu, at least soon after the first early deaths in Mexico and the United States, has been the use of anti-viral drugs, particularly osiltamivir, which, said Dr. Eric Tayag of the National Epidemiology Center, works by delaying the effects of a viral attack, giving the body enough time to marshal its own defenses.
But one problem, points out McNeil in his article, is possible resistance to Tamiflu, a brand of osiltamivir which is widely used by health authorities to treat A(H1N1) flu. ?If that happens,? says McNeil, ?the world?s Tamiflu stockpiles will be all but worthless and doctors may have to switch to Relenza, which is a powder used with an inhaler, which makes it more expensive and harder to take.?
This could very well be good news for GSK, the drug multinational which manufactures and markets Relenza, which unfortunately is not marketed here. Even better news for all of us is that GSK is currently working on the development of an A(H1N1) vaccine, although it?s still in the research stage. Already, says GSK global CEO Andrew Witty, the company has already committed about 50 million doses of the vaccine to the WHO once the vaccine is tested and approved.
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Witty was in the country on a lightning visit as part of a swing through Asia, and part of his day-long visit was a courtesy call on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
He had more good news for everyone reeling from a string of bad health news. GSK, he said, was currently ?in the last phase of clinical trials? for a vaccine against malaria. Malaria, I must point out, is a pretty common disease in the Third World (including the Philippines), so much so that people have tended to take it for granted, even accept it as part of life. Even better news is that GSK, said Roberto Taboada, managing director of GSK Philippines, is currently in the ?early research? stage of developing a vaccine against dengue, and will launch a vaccine against pneumonia ?in perhaps two months.?
Witty had more news to share with Filipinos, particularly the steps taken by the multinational to lower the prices of its medicines, especially for 18 so-called ?neglected diseases? that are prevalent in poor countries. This company-wide commitment, it was pointed out, actually anticipated the Cheaper Medicines Law. But more on that in the next column.
