Family Med Medical News about H1N1; human influenza; pandemic; rural areas

Become a Member Today!
Register

Most Viewed Abstracts

1. AHA Guidelines on Cardiac CT for Assessing Coronary Artery Disease

2. Omega-3 fatty acids for bipolar disorder

3. Is folic acid good for everyone

4. ACS Releases Guidelines for HPV Vaccination

5. Vitamin D - A review Free full text

Your Article Summary

See Latest Articles

(Click the title below to leave the MDLinx Network and go to the Journal's Website)

Australia’s pandemic ‘Protect’ strategy: the tension between prevention and patient management
Rural and Remote Health, 09/08/09

Eastwood K et al. – As Australians living in rural areas often have poorer access to health services than their urban counterparts, they are likely to be more affected by an extended emergency, even one as moderate as the present H1N1 swine influenza pandemic. There may have been benefits in extending containment measures in these less affected areas and in communities where large numbers of vulnerable people such as Indigenous Australians reside. Containment is worthwhile in limiting the spread of disease in specific situations but is unlikely to change the course of a pandemic unless it can be sustained until a large proportion of the population is vaccinated. Strenuous containment efforts should certainly be applied in outbreaks of severe disease, particularly those caused by novel infectious agents with a low reproductive rate (R0). Should advances in vaccine manufacture reduce the time taken to produce a new vaccine, then increased effort to extend containment will be even more worthwhile.