June 26, 2012

expert reaction to pandemic flu research

The Lancet Infectious Diseases published a study showing the number of deaths from the 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) pandemic may be fifteen times higher than the number of laboratory-confirmed deaths previously reported by countries to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Prof Peter Openshaw, Director of the Centre for Respiratory Infection (CRI) at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, said:

“These two articles in the same issue of the Lancet Infectious Diseases are important. The first shows that the flu pandemic was much more lethal than we thought, and the second that vaccination really does work.

“We suspected that many deaths had been missed in the official figures and this first paper shows that only a small minority of deaths were actually reported. What is a surprise is just how many cases were missed.

“The second paper shows that flu vaccines are indeed effective if the vaccine is well matched to the strain of flu that is circulating. Flu vaccines won’t prevent all ‘flu-like illness’, nor will they stop you getting flu if the flu that’s circulating is not the same as the flu used to make the vaccine. However, there is no doubt that the right vaccine will do the job it’s supposed to do.”

‘Estimated global mortality associated with the first 12 months of 2009 pandemic influenza A H1N1 virus circulation: a modelling study’ by name of Dr F. Dawood et al., published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on Tuesday 26th June.