Swine flu death toll reaches 29, with 11,194 confirmed cases

FIVE more deaths in Sydney - including a nine-year-old boy and a 78-year-old man - have raised the national death toll of victims with swine flu to 29.
The other three were two women aged 55 and 71, and a 29-year-old man.

New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant said four of the latest victims had underlying medical conditions. What caused the death of the fifth, the man in his 20s, had yet to be determined.

WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped back to center stage here on Wednesday to present an ambitious blueprint for America’s role in the world, the State Department billed it as a major foreign policy address.

But with its muscular tone and sweeping scope, it was also an effort to recapture the limelight after a period in which Mrs. Clinton has nursed both a broken elbow and the perception that the State Department has lost influence to an assertive White House.

By Nicholas Thompson 06.18.09

Vivek Kundra knows the public can create better data-driven apps than the Feds.
Photo: Ryan Pfluger
HOW-TO WIKI
How To Open Up Government Data

Luiz Augusto C. Galvão, Sally Edwards, Carlos Corvalan, Kira Fortune and Marco Akerman
Pan American Health Organization PAHO/WHO – Area of Sustainable Development and Environment
Global Health Promotion 1757-9759; Supp (1): 81–84; 103761 SAGE Publications 2009, DOI: 10.1177/1757975909103761

Available online PDF [5p.] at: http://ped.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/16/1_suppl/81

Unconfirmed reports say that President Obama has tapped Dr. Regina Benjamin as his U.S. Surgeon General candidate.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_surgeon_general

The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe:
an empirical analysis
David Stuckler PhD a b, Sanjay Basu PhD c d, Marc Suhrcke PhD e f, Adam Coutts PhD g, Martin McKee MD b h
a Department of Sociology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
b Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
c Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, CA, USA
d Division of General Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, CA, USA

Published: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 00:43

Recent gains in eradicating hunger and poverty endangered by economic and food crises, says UN report

United Nations, 2009

Available online PDF [60p.] at: http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202009%20ENG.pdf

By Helen Branswell –

TORONTO — All cases of Tamiflu resistance are not created equal. So while the first three instances of swine flu infection with Tamiflu-resistant viruses were reported in the past week, it was Number 3, not Number 1 that put influenza experts on edge.

Public health authorities in Hong Kong announced Friday they have found a case of Tamiflu resistance in a woman who hadn't taken the drug. That means she was infected with swine flu viruses that were already resistant to Tamiflu, the main weapon in most countries' and companies' pandemic drug arsenals.