Residents wear surgical masks while riding the subway in Mexico City, Monday, April 27, 2009. Mexico's government is trying to stem the spread of a deadly strain of swine flu as a new work week begins by urging people to stay home Monday if they have any symptoms of the virus believed to have killed more than 100 people. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
Over the past couple days, the international community has been monitoring the somewhat-panic-inducing spread of swine flu, which the World Health Organization has declared could become a pandemic. With over 100 deaths and thousands of potential cases in Mexico, swine flu has also been confirmed in about 40 people in the United States (including 28 students in a school in Queens), all of whom have recovered or are recovering. Elsewhere in the world, this strain of the flu has been found in Spain as well as in Canada. This is a new viral strain of influenza (combining human, avian, and mostly swine flu components) and is transmitted from person-to-person, not from pigs or eating pork. NPR seems to have a great lineup of articles whereas Mashable offers some ways to track swine flu online via RSS reader/GoogleNews or Healthmap.org (definitely check these sources – they’ve helped me stay informed and also calmed me from my overactive anxiety). And, of course, there’s always the real-time #swineflu hashtag and trending topic on Twitter. Paul Currion of humanitarian.info also lists good resources from the WHO and CDC.
Update 4/28: From InSTEDD’s most recent blog post, regarding their involvement in the swine flu situation: “From the early hours of this outbreak, we’ve been engaged with WHO in Geneva and we’re working to support the public health community at large in tracking and responding to this event.”
Update 5/1: President and CEO of InSTEDD, Eric Rasmussen, posted yesterday about the relevance of InSTEDD’s Citizen Guide to Pandemic Influenza, aka the Flu Manual – it’s available for free download here. Without being at liberty to say much about the organization’s work regarding the outbreak, he points us to two good resources:
Internally we’re following the notifications on Twitter from Veratect (www.Twitter.com/Veratect) and reading the really exceptional work that Janet Ginsburg is doing on TrackerNews.net. Don’t miss her hair-curling blog on factory farms and their infectious disease risks at www.TrackerBlog.InSTEDD.org.
P.S. I plan to interview InSTEDD team members this weekend about their use of technology in the Mekong region. It’ll be interesting to hear how they think their tools can be/are being applied to the current disease outbreak. Expect a post on my experiences later next week.
Update 5/2: InSTEDD talks about how they’re using Evolve - one of their main tools – to visually track (on a map) and collaborate around the latest information on swine flu. It’s really interesting, make sure to look at this picture for an understanding of what Evolve does.
HealthMap's visualization of news from around the world concerning Influenza. The markers are color-coded for "hotness," or intensity of the disease (see Mexico).
Another developing crisis in the world is taking place in Sri Lanka as the civil war continues between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels, or LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Based on my very limited understanding of the ongoing (25 years, to be exact) situation, the Tamils recently called for a unilateral ceasefire, which the government refused to acknowledge. The UN urged for the end of combat, concerned for the safety of the civilians caught in the Northeastern region war zone. Though this crisis is not exactly on-topic for my project on ICT for response to natural disasters/disease outbreaks, I’ve found that this particular activist field spans most humanitarian emergencies. ICT is widely used for crisis mapping as well as war/violence response in places like the Sudan. The Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) team situated in Thailand has been closely monitoring the situation in Sri Lanka but reports little access to the country to provide humanitarian relief. Their latest status: “A TSF emissary has been in Sri Lanka since Sunday April 26, in order to assess of the situation and prepare for an eventual deployment of personnel and telecommunication equipment.”
Sri Lankan soldiers. From NYTimes article, click on picture. Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press
[...] Current Developing Crises I found this as a good starting point to understand what’s going on with the swine flu. [...]