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WHO sends anti-swine flu drugs to Azerbaijan for treatment of more than 10 000 people

23 June 2009 11:30 (UTC +04:00)

WHO program coordinator Elkhan Gasimov said the virus was identified for the first time this year in USA and Mexico on April 24. â€œWHO Director declared global threat of virus spread on April 25 and pandemic alert was raised from level 3 to 4 on April 27. It means human-to-human infection threat. On April 29, the WHO declared pandemic alert level 5, which means that easy and sustainable human-to-human infection was identified in two countries at least. On June 11, the pandemic alert reached level 6, which declares the start of pandemicâ€.

Gasimov said 787 A/H1N1 infection cases and 20 deaths were reported on May 3 and there were 52160 cases of infection and 231 deaths according to the reports to June 22. â€œIt makes necessary to take all measures to educate people about the disease. Most of infected people are at age 20-60. Incubation period of human-to-human infected virus is 1-7 days. The infection period is 24 hours before the appearing of symptoms and period of clinic symptoms is all period and five days after the disease identification. The infection period is two weeks for the childrenâ€.

Gasimov said there was no fact of infection with A/H1N1 virus through pork.
â€œAll call this virus â€œswine fluâ€, because when the disease was discovered its genetic analysis resembled the â€œswine fluâ€. But even the first infections with the virus were not through swine,â€ he said.

WHO representative said there is no vaccine against the virus. But WHO is cooperating with the producers of vaccines to prepare the vaccine against A/H1N1. The vaccine will be prepared within 4-6 months.

For now the main medicines against the virus are Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and Zanamivir (Relenza). Gasimov said WHO is cooperating with Azerbaijan in combating the virus, the recommendations of the WHO are translated into Azerbaijani.

WHO presented Azerbaijani government Tamiflu for treating over 10,000 people and laboratory reagents to hold 1000 tests.
â€œIn order to protect yourself from the virus you should not contact the persons looking ill, having high temperature, coughing, often wash hands, have healthy lifestyle, sleep, eat well and be physically active,â€ he said.