The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday (13) that the new media of communication like Twitter, blogs and emails disturbed information about the flu, also known as H1N1. However, according to a study presented Tuesday at a conference of infectious disease experts in Vienna, Twitter can serve as early warning system in case of an epidemic.

A committee of experts started on Monday in Geneva, an international research on the management of influenza H1N1 that made the WHO target of much criticism. The committee was composed of 29 experts from 28 countries and it is a WHO’s response to accusations that the organization has exaggerated the threat of the first pandemic of the 21st century influenced by pharmaceutical companies which took its 193 member countries to buy more vaccines then the necessary.

The specialists, who must deliver its first interim report before May, they address a crucial issue: the difficulty of assessing the virulence of an infectious disease in terms of mortality and not just by its geographic expansion.

The H1N1 virus has caused 17,700 deaths confirmed in the laboratories in more than 200 countries and territories, according to WHO, a figure much lower than the number of deaths caused by a flu shot.

Via: Folha.