Groups: Swine flu focus bad for other diseases

[May 21, 2009]  GENEVA (AP) -- 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 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 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.

"H1N1 influenza is not taking up the major portion of discussions," Abraham said, using WHO's preferred term for swine flu. "And just because a topic is not discussed here does not mean WHO programs are going to stop. They will continue exactly as before."

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."

Ortiz said governments were preparing to pledge 10 years of action to develop better treatments and diagnostics against Chagas, which spreads mostly by blood sucking "kissing bugs" that live in the cracks of thatch-roofed mud walled homes and emerge at night to bite sleepers.

She called WHO's decision to drop the disease from the program "a shame."

"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.

The World Hepatitis Alliance, representing over 200 patient groups worldwide, said a resolution by Brazil on tackling viral hepatitis also was dropped and won't be taken up again until 2010 at the earliest.

"Viral hepatitis has never been properly addressed at a global level and the consequences have been disastrous," said Charles Gore, who heads the alliance. He expressed hope that governments and WHO would ensure that a "comprehensive, coordinated approach is adopted before another million people die," which is the annual toll from hepatitis B and C.

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 80 people since April, according to the World Health Organization.

[Associated Press; By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER and FRANK JORDANS]

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