Yesterday I attended the Department of Health briefing on swine flu where the suave new secretary of state for health, Andy Burnham, and his partner in swine, Sir Liam Donaldson, gave an update. Cases have doubled in the last week and at the current rate could hit 100,000 per day. The big news, though, is that the whole of the UK had entered the “treatment phase” of the flu pandemic plan. This means that all routine screening will cease and doctors will be able to treat the flu empirically. Giving prophylaxis to flu contacts will also end. more…

The BMA’s annual representative meeting can often feel a bit like Groundhog Day. The chairman kicks off events with some combative rhetoric about the government, the usual suspects speak in turn about concerns over NHS privatisation, and things get a little bit heated during the ethics section as rival groups exchange blows over topics such as assisted suicide and abortion. Give or take, it was ever thus. more…

391 cases of H1N1 were confirmed in the UK yesterday bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 6929. In Argentina, the state of Buenos Aires has declared a health emergency, with schools closing for their winter breaks early - the city’s mayor has called for families not to “treat this as extra holidays for the kids” and more of a “time for the children to stay at home as much as possible”. Meanwhile Australia now has 4568 confirmed  cases (198 more yesterday) and 9 deaths. more…

My plans for a H1N1 themed dinner party “come swine with me” are in tatters after Dr Jarvis, chairman of the British Medical Association’s public health committee, yesterday declared swine flu parties not to be a good idea. Apparently it will threaten to undo all the good work that’s been done to contain the outbreak. more…

In my early twenties I was felled by a bout of mental illness. It started with a panic attack. I was standing on the station at Leamington Spa waiting for a train and shivering slightly in the early autumnal chill when, without warning, a paralysing wave of fear broke over me. The terror that swept over me that afternoon was intense. Although an otherwise unremarkable day - I was waiting for the London train to visit my girlfriend - I might as well have been in line for my own annihilation, so strong and so plausible was the fear. more…

The number of laboratory confirmed cases of swine flu in England has shot up by nearly fifty percent since last Friday. 1604 new cases were confirmed between 27-29th June, bringing the total number to 4968. more…

I have just come back from a gathering of the “big dogs of British medicine” at Highclere Castle, home of Lord Carnarvon, who participated in the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The point of the meeting was to provide the Royal College of Physicians working party on future doctors with material for their deliberations.

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“We’re saying there have been at least a million cases of this new H1N1 virus in the United States so far this year. “

That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which held a press conference on Friday which shed some more light on the epidemiology and spread of the disease.
So how was this huge figure (over thirty times the number of confirmed cases) calculated?

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It is often said of military planners that they spend their time preparing to fight the last battle, not the next one. The same could be said of regulators. Take research ethics. Recently I was with the WHO in Geneva looking at the regulation of research during health emergencies. The question we were invited to consider was whether ordinary ethical standards could be modified in times of crisis. Pandemic flu was clearly in mind, although several spoke of viral haemorrhagic fevers in all their fear and drama. more…

So inevitably as a middle-aged family man with a home in the suburbs of North London I meet health professionals over dinner. ‘This is Peter, he’s a consultant anaesthetist…’ my host will say and I translate as ‘This is Peter he’s far more interesting than you and will hold court for the rest of the evening…’

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