DEATHS from swine flu in Ireland are inevitable as the disease begins to sweep the country, the Health Service Executive has warned.

With swine flu still spreading, the UN health agency is urging countries to limit their use of antiviral drugs to only high-risk patients to ensure adequate supplies in case the virus mutates and becomes more dangerous.

The World Health Organisation began to ship 2.4 million treatments of anti-flu drugs to 72 needy countries today, and its flu chief said the swine flu epidemic was still spreading.

ON Monday – before the World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert to its second-highest level – it was easy enough to laugh about the swine flu, however inappropriately.

WHEN millions of people started dying around the world in 1918, doctors and scientists didn’t have a clue what was happening. As the epidemic spread, it was blamed on everything from tiny plants to dusty books.

The World Health Organisation is working closely with Mexican officials to make sure drugs are available to fight the outbreak of swine flu, but warns other countries may need more as well if the disease spreads, a senior official said today.

A Shanghai court has put on trial six people accused of making an unlicensed version of the anti-bird flu drug Tamiflu, newspapers and the court announced today.

THE effect of the deadly bird flu outbreak in Britain, where 160,000 turkeys were culled in Suffolk, is that while this country has taken increased measures to avoid an eruption here, there is no need for panic among the general public.

EUROPE is being flooded with fake medicines, the EU warned yesterday.

The fight against the global €28 billion illegal medicines racket is being waged every day at Irish borders and delivery depots, but is set to escalate further, writes Paul Kelly.

Twenty-five years after the first AIDS cases jolted the world, US scientists think they soon may have a pill that could prevent HIV, the virus that causes the disease.

Egypt reported its second human case of avian flu today while Israel continued its precautionary culling of hundreds of thousands of birds.

The number of suspected bird flu cases in humans reached at least 32 in Turkey today, while the UN health agency confirmed at least two patients – a brother and sister who died – tested positive for bird flu.

A British laboratory has found that two Turkish teenagers who died earlier this week had bird flu, authorities said, and a health official in Geneva said scientists were closing in on identifying the virus as the deadly H5N1 strain.

BIRD flu has killed at least one person in China, officials said yesterday, confirming the spread of the deadly virus to people in another large Asian country where it might prove hard to contain.

China has reported two new outbreaks of bird flu among chickens in its north-eastern province of Liaoning, bringing the total number of reported outbreaks in the past month to six.

A UN agricultural expert has said that much more money is needed to stop the bird flu virus in poultry worldwide, as Vietnam – the country worst hit by the disease – confirmed its first human death in three months.

The country worst hit by bird flu, Vietnam, confirmed its 42nd human death today from the virus, as the World Health Organisation warned governments to be ready for when – not if – a deadly pandemic arrives that could kill millions.

China and Vietnam banned poultry imports from countries with bird flu as US and Chinese officials met today to co-ordinate strategy on stopping the spread of the deadly virus.

As China reported its third outbreak of bird flu in a week, public health groups have urged officials to bypass patent laws and mass-produce generic versions of potentially lifesaving anti-viral drugs.

A THAI boy tested positive for bird flu yesterday, but doctors said he was recovering and there was no sign he caught the virus from his infected father who died earlier this week, calming fears of a human pandemic.

The maker of a key bird flu drug said today that sales of the treatment had more than doubled as countries stocked up ahead of a possible pandemic.