Medicine News

Flu is a serious contagious disease. Each year in the United States, on average, more than 200,000 people are hospitalized and 36,000 people die from seasonal flu complications.

This flu season could be worse because there is a new and very different influenza virus causing illness called 2009 H1N1. CDC expects both 2009 H1N1 flu and seasonal flu to cause illness, hospital stays and deaths this season and is preparing for an early and possibly severe flu season.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urges you to take the following actions to protect yourself and others from influenza (the flu):


Take time to get a flu vaccine.
CDC recommends a yearly seasonal flu vaccine as the first and most important step in protecting against seasonal influenza.
While there are many different flu viruses, the seasonal flu vaccine protects against the three seasonal viruses that research suggests will be most common.
Vaccination is especially important for people at high risk of serious flu complications, including young children, pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease and people 65 years and older.
Seasonal flu vaccine also is important for health care workers, and other people who live with or care for high risk people to keep from making them sick.
A seasonal vaccine will not protect you against 2009 H1N1.
A new vaccine against 2009 H1N1 is being made.
People at greatest risk for 2009 H1N1 infection include children, pregnant women, and people with chronic health conditions like asthma, diabetes or heart and lung disease.
Ask your doctor if you should get a 2009 H1N1 vaccine.


Take everyday preventive actions.
Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.*
Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.
Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
If you are sick with flu-like illness, CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them.
Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other measures to keep our distance from each other to lessen the spread of flu.


Take flu antiviral drugs if your doctor recommends them.
If you get seasonal or 2009 H1N1 flu, antiviral drugs can treat the flu.
Antiviral drugs are prescription medicines (pills, liquid or an inhaled powder) that fight against the flu by keeping flu viruses from reproducing in your body.
The priority use for antiviral drugs this season is to treat people who are very sick (hospitalized) or people who are sick with flu-like symptoms and who are at increased risk of serious flu complications, such as pregnant women, young children, people 65 and older and people with chronic health conditions. (Most people have been able to recover at home from 2009 H1N1 without needing medical care and the same is true of seasonal flu.)
Antiviral drugs can make illness milder and shorten the time you are sick. They may also prevent serious flu complications.
Antiviral drugs are not sold over-the-counter and are different from antibiotics.
For treatment, antiviral drugs work best if started within the first 2 days of symptoms.
Flu-like symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people may also have vomiting and diarrhea. People may be infected with the flu, including 2009 H1N1 and have respiratory symptoms without a fever.
Visit the CDC 2009 H1N1 website to find out what to do if you get sick with the flu and how to care for someone at home who is sick with the flu.

Please visit http://www.cdc.gov/ for more information

Accordint to usatoday.com vaccine for the H1N1 flu won't be widely available until November — a month later than first thought — and some states are expecting delays to last until December.
"Ten days ago or two weeks ago it was thought end of October" that lots of vaccine would be available, said Donn Moyer of the Washington State Department of Health. Now health officials are hearing "the beginning or middle of November."


The CDC's Anne Schuchat said Tuesday that states had ordered 10.8 million of the 12.8 million available doses of vaccine. The CDC had expected to receive up to 40 million doses by the end of October, but last week it announced the number would be closer to 28 million to 30 million. "By November, there will be a lot of vaccine out there," Schuchat said. The agency says it expects to eventually have vaccine for everyone who wants it.

"I wish we had more than we have right now, but I do want to let you know that we do have more coming out every day," Schuchat said.

"The vaccine's in a race against the virus, and right now the virus is winning," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "I just had three meetings canceled because people were sick."

It's not that the government hasn't done everything it could to get the vaccine made, he said. "They've just overpromised on when the vaccine is going to get here."

According to health officials child deaths from the new virus, identified in April as a global epidemic and named swine flu were 'shooting up" in the United States. The CDC doesn't have an exact count of all swine flu deaths and hospitalizations, but existing reports suggest more than 600 have died and more than 9,000 have been hospitalized. Health officials believe millions of Americans have caught the virus. The regular flu kills between 46 and 88 children a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That suggests deaths from the new H1N1 virus could dramatically outpace children's deaths from seasonal flu, if swine flu continues to spread as it has.

CDC officials say 10 more states, a total of 37, now have widespread swine flu. A week ago, reports suggested that cases might be leveling off and even falling in some areas of the country, but that did not turn out to be an enduring national trend.

"We are seeing more illness, more hospitalizations, and more deaths," the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said at a press conference Friday.

In a drive to inoculate people against swine flu before winter, many European governments say they will fast-track the testing of a vaccine, arousing concern among some experts about safety and proper doses.
The European Medicines Agency, the EU's top drug regulatory body, is accelerating the approval process for swine flu vaccine, and countries such as Britain, Greece, France and Sweden say they'll start using the vaccine after it's greenlighted - possibly within weeks.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization's flu chief, warned about the potential dangers of untested vaccines, although he stopped short of criticizing Europe's approach outright.
"One of the things which cannot be compromised is the safety of vaccines," he said Friday. "There are certain areas where you can make economies, perhaps, but certain areas where you simply do not try to make any economies."
The WHO's experts are assured; that the pandemic of a swine flu will touch all countries of the world is only a matter of time.
At the same time the first tests of a new vaccine against a swine flu on volunteers have begin in Australia on Wednesday, on July, 22nd. As the representative of Australian pharmaceutical company CSL Ltd informs, 240 volunteers from 18 till 64 years were recruited to testing.

Two injections of a vaccine within three weeks will be given to participants of tests, and then patients will pass regular analyses of blood. So physicians can define whether an organism develops the suitable immune answer to a virus. According to the physicians, specific virus A/H1N1 will demand a double dose of a vaccine, that guarantee the sufficient level of the immune answer with more probability