On July 30th, the Verbier Festival, one of the most prestigious music festival in Europe, hosted “Concerto for Piano and science”, a public workshop organized in collaboration with the ASSET project.
In 2009 A(H1N1) pandemic, vaccines were ready and could be supplied only when the peak of the pandemic was already decreasing in most European countries, discouraging people from getting vaccinated. Since the disease was not as severe as it was feared in the beginning, the consequences of this delay were not that serious, even if some lives could have been saved if the vaccines were available in advance. Ebola vaccine also arrived to West Africa when the epidemic was over, while a zika vaccine is still very far away. According to Thomas Breuer, however, GSK Chief Medical Officer, in case of another flu pandemic, a better cooperation among stakeholders and new technologies could accelerate the production and supply of new vaccines.
Using music to convey messages of health education and prevention to the general public. This is the idea behind the participation of ASSET to the Verbier Festival, one of the most prestigious music festival in Europe.
Albert Osterhaus, director of the Research Center for Emerging Infections and Zoonoses (RIZ) in Hannover, Germany, and Chairman of the European Working group on Influenza (ESW), is one of the top virologist in the world, who has discovered more than 50 new viruses over the last decades. In this short video he explains why the word “pandemic” can be a cause of misunderstanding between health authorities and the public, as it happened in 2009, when the new emerging flu virus A(H1N1) turned out to be milder than expected in the beginning.
Severe pandemics due to highly‐transmissible viruses continue to threaten the world in the 21st century. In a tightly interconnected world, infectious disease outbreaks can adversely affect economic growth, trade, tourism, business and industry, and social stability as well as public and population health. Public health authorities and researchers now collect data from many sources, and analyze these data together to estimate the incidence and prevalence of different health conditions, as well as related risk factors.
Bulletin of the World Health Organization Planning for uncertainty: a European approach to informing responses to the severity of influenza epidemics and pandemics
Smith RD, Keogh-Brown MR, Barnett T, Tait J. BMJ. 2009 Nov 19;339:b4571.
Objectives: To estimate the potential economic impact of pandemic influenza, associated behavioural responses, school closures, and vaccination on the United Kingdom.
Design: A computable general equilibrium model of the UK economy was specified for various combinations of mortality and morbidity from pandemic influenza, vaccine efficacy, school closures, and prophylactic absenteeism using published data.
