Translated material
Antivirus program
The Influenza Research Institute has prepared a standard for combating the A/H1N1 strain
This coming Monday, the head of the Influenza Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, academician Oleg Kiselev, will present to the Ministry of Health and Social Development a standard according to which it will be prescribed to treat type A/H1N1 influenza in our country. If approved by officials, this document, as Mr. Kiselev explained to Vremya Novostei, will determine not only a set of medications for the treatment of a new type of disease, but will also offer detailed hygienic recommendations, as well as preventive measures. The latter are fully compliant with the international health regulations revised by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005.For example, it is proposed to actually double the mass flu vaccination program by adding a new vaccine against the current form of the A/H1N1 virus to the mandatory vaccination against the seasonal strain for some groups of citizens. This highly variable virus is expected to mutate at some intervals, requiring appropriate changes in the vaccine design.
Modern science cannot predict how often the virus will change and how much more aggressive it will become as a result of such degenerations. And its prevalence is already very high: according to WHO, A/H1N1 is present on all continents; in Europe alone, out of 53 countries, infected people have been identified in 30. These two facts gave rise to the WHO leadership to declare the sixth - the highest - level of threat of a new pandemic flu “We must understand that this is not about the fact that this virus now poses a super threat to all humanity, but about the fact that we do not know how it will behave in the future. Therefore, we are starting the active phase of the fight,” explained the meaning of the highest level of threat, Director General of the WHO European Bureau, Mark Danzon. According to him, no one can guarantee that A/H1N1, while acting rather mildly, will not “go wild” during the second wave or when combined with seasonal flu and turn out to be a new “Spanish flu”, which claimed millions of lives in 1918. “We must be aware that we are on the verge of a new pandemic with a completely new virus. And be fully aware that this virus is not the same as the regular flu, nor does it come in place of the seasonal flu. It's a completely separate disease,” says Mr. Danzon.
“We are just very lucky that a vaccine can be produced for this virus, unlike hundreds of others. Such viruses constitute no more than 5% of those existing in nature,” explains Academician Felix Ershov, head of the department of interferons and the laboratory of interferonogenesis at the Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. Vaccination is the main preventive measure that WHO recommends to stop the pandemic. In America and Europe, the vaccine is still at the stage of clinical trials, and they could last several months, Mr. Danzon believes. “The main thing for us now is to make sure that these drugs are safe. After all, history teaches us that treatment is often more dangerous than the disease itself,” admitted the international functionary. “On the instructions of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, five research institutes in Russia are now working on the creation of a domestic vaccine against influenza A/H1N1. In September, we plan to begin testing this drug on volunteers,” reports Oleg Kiselev.
But carrying out two vaccination campaigns simultaneously - against seasonal influenza and against A/H1N1 - obviously requires double funding. “In no case do we intend to redistribute funds in medicine, withdrawing them from other programs. The state allocates additional funds,” assured the head of the Influenza Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. As it became known yesterday, an additional 3 billion rubles will be allocated from the federal budget for the purchase of a vaccine against the new flu. This was announced by the country's chief sanitary doctor Gennady Onishchenko. The estimated retail price of the vaccine is 120--150 rubles. per dose.
“In addition to today’s spending, we also require subjects to reserve money in their budgets in case of an unfavorable scenario,” noted Mr. Onishchenko. Thus, there should be enough money to purchase drugs for the main part of the socially active population. Let us recall that previously exactly the same amount was allocated by the state for the purchase of a vaccine against the seasonal virus. “It is assumed that if a pandemic begins, the predicted number of cases will be 30% (of the total number of Russians), and 6 million 300 thousand people will need hospitalization. This is in the first year of the pandemic, after the start, for three to four months of its development,” Gennady Onishchenko outlined the most unfavorable scenario. In this case, even more significant financial resources will be attracted, experts are sure.