Pandemic flu straining Afghan health clinics: WHO

Afghanistan has seen a 60 percent increase in the number of respiratory ailments this winter, with H1N1 flu adding pressure on a medical system already weakened by the war, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. "The current winter season is of great concern to health providers," Peter Graaff, the WHO representative in Afghanistan, told a news briefing in Geneva.
He said the pandemic virus was spreading at the community level in 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, with a resultant jump in the official number of acute respiratory infections. Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Mongolia are the first three countries which are to receive doses of pandemic vaccine in the next few weeks, the WHO said on Thursday. The UN agency plans to send vaccines donated by drug makers and governments to 95 poor countries in all.