SF Chronicle: Fear spreading faster than swine flu in Ukraine

One night at the height of the panic over what people here call the California flu, as 24-hour news stations tracked a rising death toll and politicians speculated about a mystery lung plague, Ukraine's prime minister rushed to the airport to greet a shipment of Tamiflu as if it were a foreign dignitary. Not to be outdone, the president, a bitter political foe, dispatched a top aide to meet the plane, too.

In neighboring Belarus, the government took an opposite tack, accusing drug companies of fanning hysteria over swine flu to boost profit. In Poland, the health minister is under fire for refusing to stock up on a vaccine, while doctors in Hungary are resisting orders to administer the shot. In Turkmenistan, the authorities have been accused of covering up an epidemic, with infectious-disease wards reportedly full and people being turned away.

As the pandemic H1N1 influenza surges with the onset of winter, the nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union appear particularly vulnerable to the deadly virus. Burdened with weak health care systems, relatively inexperienced news media and shaky governments that have little public trust, the region also seems ripe for panic and political strife over the flu.

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SF Chronicle: Fear spreading faster than swine flu in Ukraine

And a report at RT Wladiwostok:

Today.AZ: WHO to send extra swine flu medicines to Azerbaijan

The World Health Organization (WHO) has sent to Azerbaijan extra Tamiflu sufficient for treatment of 38,700 people for swine flu, project coordinator of WHO office in Azerbaijan Elkhan Gasimov said.

He said the major A/H1N1 (swine flu) medicines were brought to Azerbaijan at the end of last week.

“WHO did not send medicines only to Azerbaijan. There are other countries in this list, too,” he said.

Elkhan Gasimov said in May WHO sent Tamiflu to Azerbaijan for treatment of 10,000 people.

The first part of the vaccines against the swine flu will be brought to the country late in November – early in December.

Nearly 170,000 doses of vaccines (2 percent of the population) will be brought to Azerbaijan.

Today.AZ: WHO to send extra swine flu medicines to Azerbaijan

USA Today: Drug resistant H1N1 found in USA and UK

Epidemic experts say they are investigating the apparent spread of Tamiflu-resistant swine flu virus among four patients at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., and five in a hospital in Wales.

These clusters appear to be the first in which a virus resistant to the antiviral Tamiflu, a mainstay of flu treat, has spread from person to person, researchers said Friday.

If Tamiflu-resistant virus spreads widely, swine flu will become tougher to treat and may cost more lives, says Duke's Daniel Sexton, who is leading the hospital's investigation.

Doctors say investigations of the two hospital outbreaks are underway, but the preliminary genetic evidence suggests that the virus spread among patients at the hospitals.

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USA Today: Drug resistant H1N1 found in USA and UK