| | |  Health & Beauty | May 2009 
Groups: Flu Focus Bad for Other Diseases
 Bradley S. Klapper - Associated Press
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| | Two students were diagnosed with swine flu at the Clifton Hill primary school in Melbourne, Australia. Mexico City Thursday fully lifted all swine flu restrictions imposed on the sprawling metropolis, as global health authorities puzzled over the origins and severity of the A(H1N1) virus. (AFP/William West) | |
Geneva - Diseases killing millions of people all over the world are being neglected at this year's World Health Assembly because of fears about swine flu and its potential to become a pandemic, health campaigners said Wednesday.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, said it was upset that discussions were postponed on fighting Chagas disease, a scourge in Latin American countries. Cancer and diabetes groups said non-communicable diseases responsible for 35 million deaths a year needed greater attention. And hepatitis campaigners were disappointed that a first-ever World Health Organization, or WHO, resolution addressing that disease was dropped from the meeting's agenda.
Health officials from some poorer nations also could not understand why the diseases hurting them most were a distant second to swine flu.
"Malaria, drug-resistant tuberculosis - they are killing people every day," said Dr. Sam Zaramba, Uganda's chief medical officer. "If all the emphasis that has been put on swine flu had been put on malaria and TB, we would have made a bigger impact on health."
Zaramba and other African officials said they had to fight hard to get tuberculosis back on the agenda of the five-day meeting.
So far, the swine flu virus that has infected more than 10,000 people - mostly in Mexico and the United States - appears little more dangerous than seasonal flu. Most people infected do not need treatment, but the concern of many of the world's leading health authorities is that the virus may somehow mutate into a more lethal disease.
WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham said some issues had to be dropped when the agency's 193 member nations decided to shorten their annual meeting because their ministers were needed at home to prepare against a possible flu pandemic.
But he said the assembly was still taking on a "broad agenda" that went far beyond swine flu to deal with improving basic health care and tackling global killers like TB.
To fight the global swine flu outbreak, WHO has redirected some of its own staff from other health programs.
The agency recently sent a memo to staff asking for volunteers to work on swine flu, saying "a sustained effort will be needed in the weeks/months to come to maintain this operation."
Health campaigners called it a missed opportunity for a number of diseases that could use greater global attention.
"This is the irony: it's been 100 years since the parasite causing Chagas disease was discovered," said Gemma Ortiz, a senior advocacy officer at MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders. "Yet we're still stuck with two drugs from the 1960s for treatment and no tests to see if it's cured."
"It's hard putting 15,000 who die a year on hold, or that 14 million suffering from this disease are ignored and silenced because other preparations are going on," Ortiz said.
Meanwhile, cancer and diabetes advocates said non-communicable diseases also needed greater funding, better medicine and more attention.
"Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases cause 60 percent of all deaths worldwide," said a joint statement from the International Diabetes Federation, International Union Against Cancer and World Heart Federation.
Swine flu has killed 87 people since April, according to the World Health Organization. |
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