The WHO is ringing alarm bells, labeling the new coronavirus as “major challenge for all of the countries which have been affected as well as the rest of the world.”
The nCoV coronavirus is the new disease to become center of international attention. There are fears it will reach the scale of other similar diseases, like bird flu, which took 371 lives since 2003 or swine flu which saw more than 18,000 dead in its 2009 outbreak.
All of these figures, however, pale in comparison with the annual death toll from common flu. “Seasonal influenza epidemics can affect up to 15 per cent of the population and result in up to 500 000 deaths worldwide each year”, according to WHO’s 2011 report.
The real killer, however, does not make headlines and is not something the pharmaceutical industry announces a crusade against. All attention is usually on the new viruses, with often excessive advertising campaigns for preventing and curing them.
The most notable and controversial was the case with Swiss-produced Tamiflu. Back at the time of the swine flu pandemic, four years ago, it was pronounced cure number one for the disease. People were sweeping the drug from pharmacies’ shelves, governments stockpiled it.
Then came the eye-opener - a study published in the British Medical Journal in December 2009 found no evidence that Tamiflu lowered the risk of flu complications.
The Council of Europe eventually wanted WHO to be called to account, and possibly admit that the swine flu threat was blown out of proportion.
Overblown or not, the swine flu panic landed an estimated US$18 billion in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies’ owners.
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