World lays swine flu defences

FRANCE: Governments are stockpiling flu remedies, have ordered tens of millions of vaccines and are drawing up quarantine plans in the hope of halting the swine flu epidemic before it turns truly deadly.

So far the disease's effects have been uneven, hitting some countries more than others, but the World Health Organisation has warned that all 6.8 billion people on the planet are at risk as the pandemic gathers strength.

Here is a selection of the major efforts underway to halt its spread.

A neighbour of Mexico, where the A(H1N1) strain of swine flu was first detected, the United States had by mid-July the world's highest number of confirmed cases 40,617 and 263 people had died.

Behind the confirmed cases, authorities believe the true number of flu carriers to be closer to a million.

Health officials are to hold an emergency meeting on July 29 to draw up an action plan, and orders have been placed for 10 million doses of flu vaccine for distribution by mid-October.

Vaccines, which are now being developed for the new flu strain, will be tested in August. Federal and state governments have stockpiled 61 million doses of Tamiflu and Relenza flu remedies between them. Central and South America have born the brunt of the disease's spread, with 500 of the confirmed deaths around the world by mid-July.

The disease was first recorded in Mexico, where 138 people have died, and has spread as far as Argentina, which with 165 dead is second only to the United States in terms of confirmed mortality.

Latin American health ministers have complained that the developed world has pre-ordered much of the expected production of flu remedies, but the states are nevertheless putting in place their own prevention plans.

AFP