| Infection control experts are scrambling to respond to outbreaks of swine flu in Mexico and the US, and suspected cases elsewhere.
HOW SWINE FLU OUTBREAK EMERGED
BACK 1 of 4 NEXT Swine flu is a respiratory disease, caused by influenza type A which infects pigs. There are many types, and the infection is constantly changing. Until now it has not normally infected humans, but the latest form clearly does, and can be spread from person to person – probably through coughing and sneezing. What is new about this type of swine flu? The World Health Organization has confirmed that at least some of the human cases are a never-before-seen version of the H1N1 strain of influenza type A.
H1N1 is the same strain which causes seasonal outbreaks of flu in humans on a regular basis. But this latest version of H1N1 is different: it contains genetic material that is typically found in strains of the virus that affect humans, birds and swine. Flu viruses have the ability to swap genetic components with each other, and it seems likely that the new version of H1N1 resulted from a mixing of different versions of the virus, which may usually affect different species, in the same animal host. Pigs provide an excellent ‘melting pot’ for these viruses to mix and match with each other. How dangerous is it? Symptoms of swine flu in humans appear to be similar to those produced by standard, seasonal flu. These include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, chills and fatigue. Most cases so far reported around the world appear to be mild, but in Mexico lives have been lost. How worried should people be? When any new strain of flu emerges that acquires the ability to pass from person to person, it is monitored very closely in case it has the potential to spark a global epidemic, or pandemic.
The World Health Organization has warned that taken together the Mexican and US cases could potentially trigger a global pandemic, and stress that the situation is serious. However, experts say it is still too early to accurately assess the situation fully. Currently, they say the world is closer to a flu pandemic than at any point since 1968 – rating the threat at three on a six-point scale. Nobody knows the full potential impact of a pandemic, but experts have warned that it could cost millions of lives worldwide. The Spanish flu pandemic, which began in 1918, and was also caused by an H1N1 strain, killed millions of people. The fact that all the cases in the US and elsewhere have so far produced mild symptoms is encouraging. It suggests that the severity of the Mexican outbreak may be due to an unusual geographically-specific factor – possibly a second unrelated virus circulating in the community – which would be unlikely to come into play in the rest of the world. Alternatively, people infected in Mexico may have sought treatment at a much later stage than those in other countries. It may also be the case that the form of the virus circulating in Mexico is subtly different to that elsewhere – although that will only be confirmed by laboratory analysis. There is also hope that, as humans are often exposed to forms of H1N1 through seasonal flu, our immune systems may have something of a head start in fighting infection. However, the fact that many of the victims are young does point to something unusual. Normal, seasonal flu tends to affect the elderly disproportionately. Can the virus be contained? The virus appears already to have started to spread around the world, and most experts believe that containment of the virus in the era of readily available air travel will be extremely difficult. Can it be treated? The US authorities say that two drugs commonly used to treat flu, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem to be effective at treating cases that have occurred there so far. However, the drugs must be administered at an early stage to be effective. Use of these drugs may also make it less likely that infected people will pass the virus on to others. The UK Government already has a stockpile of Tamiflu, ordered as a precaution against a pandemic. It is unclear how effective currently available flu vaccines would be at offering protection against the new strain, as it is genetically distinct from other flu strains. US scientists are already developing a bespoke new vaccine, but it may take some time to perfect it, and manufacture enough supplies to meet what could be huge demand. A vaccine was used to protect humans from a version of swine flu in the US in 1976. However, it caused serious side effects, including an estimated 500 cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome. There were more deaths from the vaccine than the outbreak. What should I do to stay safe? Anyone with flu-like symptoms who might have been in contact with the swine virus – such as those living or travelling in the areas of Mexico that have been affected – should seek medical advice. But patients are being asked not to go into doctors surgeries in order to minimise the risk of spreading the disease to others. Instead, they should stay at home and call their healthcare provider for advice. Although the Foreign and Commonwealth Office says people “should be aware” of the outbreak, it is not currently advising people against travelling to affected areas of Mexico and the US. What measures can I take to prevent infection? Avoid close contact with people who appear unwell and who have fever and cough. General infection control practices and good hygiene can help to reduce transmission of all viruses, including the human swine influenza. This includes covering your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, using a tissue when possible and disposing of it promptly. It is also important to wash your hands frequently with soap and water to reduce the spread of the virus from your hands to face or to other people and cleaning hard surfaces like door handles frequently using a normal cleaning product. If caring for someone with a flu-like illness, a mask can be worn to cover the nose and mouth to reduce the risk of transmission. The UK is looking at increasing its stockpile of masks for healthcare workers for this reason. But experts say there is no scientific evidence to support more general wearing of masks to guard against infections. Is it safe to eat pig meat? Yes. There is no evidence that swine flu can be transmitted through eating meat from infected animals. However, it is essential to cook meat properly. A temperature of 70C (158F) would be sure to kill the virus. What about bird flu? The strain of bird flu which has caused scores of human deaths in South East Asia in recent years is a different strain to that responsible for the current outbreak of swine flu. The latest form of swine flu is a new type of the H1N1 strain, while bird, or avian flu, is H5N1. Experts fear H5N1 hold the potential to trigger a pandemic because of its ability to mutate rapidly. However, up until now it has remained very much a disease of birds. Those humans who have been infected have, without exception, worked closely with birds, and cases of human-to-human transmission are extremely rare – there is no suggestion that H5N1 has gained the ability to pass easily from person to person. Where can I get further advice? Further information and advice on swine flu can be found at websites of leading health and research organisations around the world. The World Health Organisation gives background information on the virus. The UK’s Health Protection Agency advises the public about what to do if returning from an affected area. NHS Choices outlines how swine flu is different from other flu. The US government’s Centre for Disease Control is counting the number of cases in the US. You can also track the spread of swine flu reports using unofficial sources. Healthmaps maps viruses using news reports. Social media guide Mashable lists some ways to track the virus . Links to useful websites are being shared on Twitter , the micro-blogging service. Read answers from an expert to some of your questions on swine flu
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Category: Travel
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‘Too late’ to contain swine flu
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Turkish Lira fourth most popular currency as holidaymakers shun eurozone
The Turkish Lira has become the fourth most popular currency at the country’s leading bureaux de change, as British holidaymakers start to desert the increasingly-expensive Eurozone.
By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor
Last Updated: 5:51PM BST 21 Apr 2009The Lira was the fourth most popular currency last year, behind the euro, dollar and Australian dollar Photo: GETTY According to the Post Office, which changes £1 in every £3 that holidaymakers take overseas, the demand for Turkish Lira increased by 21 per cent last year and is on course to grow again this year.
Last year it overtook the Canadian Dollar to become the fourth most popular currency and if its current popularity continues it could overtake the Australian dollar to reach the third spot by the end of this year.
The popularity of the currency is the latest evidence to suggest destinations in the Eurozone, such as Spain and Italy, have fallen out of favour with holidaymakers because of the collapse in the value of the pound.
A year ago £1 would have bought €1.27. Though it has improved greatly over the last month from a low of €1.03, it only buys €1.13 this week.
In contrast the Lira has remained stable at about £1 to 2.40 Turkish Lira over the course of the last 12 months.
OAG, a research company which monitors passenger numbers around the world, indicated that the number of passengers leaving the UK in the first three months of this year fell by 10.5 per cent, with 5.28 million fewer seats filled than a year ago.
Most of this slump has been driven by a sharp fall in trips to Europe. The Civil Aviation Authority said traffic between Heathrow and the Eurozone had fallen by 8.7 per cent, while traffic to other destinations was up by 1.8 per cent.
Turkey has emerged as one of the winners, offering holidaymakers a range of cheap hotel rooms, combined with the promise of low priced meals, drink and trips.
Sarah Munro, head of travel at the Post Office, said: “We have seen unprecedented demand for lira over the past year. Turkey is still cheaper than anywhere in the eurozone.
“The strength of the euro compared with the weakness of the Turkish lira against sterling is obviously having an impact and 2009 sales to date suggest another growth year for Turkey. That is why we are extending our over the counter service for Turkish lira from 1,400 to 4,000 Post Office branches.”
Previously customers needed to order Lira in advance if they wanted to change money at the great majority of Post Offices.
The Lira was the fourth most popular currency last year, behind the euro, dollar and Australian dollar.
So far this year, demand has increased by 9 per cent, compared with last year. The Lira is expected to overtake the Australian dollar to become the third most popular currency.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, England, 21 Apr 2009
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Cash boost for Turkish sunseekers
THE Post Office has more than doubled the number of branches where Turkish lira can be bought over the counter.
The move comes as or holiday bookings to this summer’s most popular foreign destination continues to grow.
After seeing double-digit growth in demand for lira over the past two months compared with a year ago, 12 Post Office branches in Lanarkshire are part of 4000 Post Office bureau de change branches in the UK offering instant currency on the spot.
Until mid-May, customers buying Turkish lira will benefit from a special deal offering an exclusive exchange rate daily without imposing any minimum spend conditions.
The move comes after the Post Office reported a 21% increase in sales of Turkish lira in 2008.
The Post Office warns people planning travel to Turkey to watch the exchange rate movements carefully as the lira has proved more volatile than most currencies.
Source: Glasgow Evening Times, Scotland, 24/04/09
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There’s No Recession in Turkey
Mardan Palace Hotel: Russian billionaire Telman Ismailov is thumbing his nose at the very idea of a recession happening anywhere in the world. He’s so confident in the oodles of money that must be floating around somewhere, he’s pushing forward with the opening of his hotel, located on the Turkish Riviera. This $1.4 billion property (built with TI’s own money, natch) will have the honor of being the most expensive hotel in Europe (take that Hotel Martinez!). The Mardan Palace was inspired by the Ottoman empire and modeled after the Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul. Though the hotel has 560 rooms, only 2 are considered “royal suites.” To be worthy of such royalty, which includes your own private golden (!) swimming pool, and a 24-hour butler, it’ll cost you a cool $18,000 a night. If you’d rather buy a car or house instead of staying a week or so in the royal suites, the regular rooms only run about $300 a night. Beyond the rooms, there’s a two-acre spa, a “vitamin bar,” and a Champagne bar (now we’re talking). In addition, there’s a large botanical garden, several huge aquariums, two dozen restaurants/lounges, and a 900-person outdoor amphitheatre. There’s also a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course for those who want to play a few rounds. The hotel is planning to open in June.
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Black Book
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The great wheel of China
Nov 19th 2008
From The World in 2009 print edition
By Nicola BartlettMine’s bigger than yours
Originally designed to last for a year, the London Eye, like that other “temporary” attraction, the Eiffel Tower, is not going anywhere. Instead, with over 3.5m visitors a year London’s Ferris wheel has paved the way for other cities hoping to cash in on the effect. In 2009 Chicago, the original home of the Ferris, will upgrade its Navy Pier wheel to double its original size, to over 91 metres (300ft), and Berlin’s wheel, around 50 metres higher than its 135-metre London rival, will be the tallest in Europe at almost 185 metres.
But China will set the world record with its 208-metre Beijing wheel. It will take over from Singapore’s 165-metre wheel. Beijing’s Great Observation Wheel, as it is formally known, is a government-sponsored project set in Chaoyang park. With 48 air-conditioned capsules, each weighing 18 tonnes and containing 40 people, its maximum capacity of 1,920 people per rotation will dwarf the London Eye’s 800.
Dubai, if its spending spree lasts, launches its 185-metre wheel as part of the Dubailand theme park. But things won’t stop there. World Tourist Attractions, the company behind wheels in York, Manchester and Brisbane, will open its first Indian wheel in the southern city of Bangalore in April, and in 2010 the Great Wheel Corporation (responsible for the ones in Singapore, Berlin and Beijing) plans to open the Orlando wheel in Florida, standing at 122 metres and with panoramic views stretching 25 miles (40km).
With violence seemingly on the wane, Baghdad’s authorities are beginning the tough sell of tourism in the Iraqi capital, having recently launched a design competition for a Baghdad wheel. Although details of the wheel, even its location, are sketchy, a municipal spokesman has confirmed that it will reach 198 metres into the sky and carry some 30 capsules. It may be just over a century since G.W. Ferris designed his attraction, but it seems no modern city skyline can be complete without a wheel—and the bigger the better.
Economist
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Good News From Mozambique
The balance and imbalance experiences that affected the world in the last century, seems to maintain its effect in the future as it is doing at the moment. The impressions and the observations we obtained reveal that after a time, the impressions carried on in the “Black Continent” had exploded and the native people wanted to present a way out and to do something about this.
Mozambique is a mistreated country which had his share of the colonialism like the other African countries. We know that Portugal is also active in that geography of which Europe profit every inch. Portugal kept his effect up for a long time until the Mozambicans drove them away from this region 30 years ago.
In the county governed with capitalist economic system, all the balances that would be useful for Portugal were ready. But all the development plans disappeared when the native people drove them away. The communist system which tried hard to rule the country after the capitalism managed to continue ruling even by force. Occident who didn’t have his profits lost, caused to the civil war in the country. The conflicts between the government and the people came to an end with efforts of Anglican Church to bring together the representatives of the people and the governments. The country obtained nothing more than harm at the end of the civil war. At the end of that agreement the campaign, “collecting weapons from people”, was started and until that time 600.000 weapons has been able to collected. When we look at the weapons collected it surprises us that they come from Russia, England, and USA. Shortly, it can be called a civil war supported outwardly. A tableau of the people who doesn’t know for what they fight and who obtained the greatest harm.
The development of the country becomes slowly. Having harm more than a profit of the communism is also a factor to this. This system wasn’t accepted in this area because of the fact that the people have a mentality that consists of a leader and forming group. And the government is being effected by the collapse lived in 1991. After that the commerce of the country has been brought to a moderate atmosphere. One of the biggest postwar problems of Mozambique in which a person working in an average job earns 40 $, is the sweeping of the mines in the north region. Mine Research Commission states that the mine maps belonging to that time are lost and extensive mine researches are stopped because the attention of worldly public opinion is attracted to Iraq and Afghanistan. Henceforth, there, the mortal weapons are used to make a work of art. Messages on the useless of these weapons are being given to the people. The authorities, who say that even for the children imitation weapons shouldn’t be bought, state that people can go forward if they take their lesson from the history. Today, even in British Museum the work of art called “the Life Tree” that the people made from the weapons takes part. In the country in which ideological fixed ideas will disappear in time, in some of the streets the names of the ex-communist-leaders take part. But people’s longing to democracy and endeavoring for realizing this makes us happy.
Fishing has the greatest part for people’s making their life. In Mozambique which is a port country, a small Turkish educator group takes part. We don’t have any economical activity there yet. We want to keep our expansionist policy up there too and we thank to Sezai Kara and the other Turks who represent us there after Ottoman. The main after all is the conflict between people and systems has continued during centuries. The thing that changes the movement of happenings: exterior forces, methods that the people applied, geographical features and events lived. Today Africa is changing and becoming conscious. It is enough that it is set free. External effects having lasted too many years wore them out but they believe that they will have the required strength for rising. It is enough at least. These people lived under slavery for centuries but the ones who have lived under slavery for too many years, haven’t wanted to rise and who misses the times under slavery astonish us.
These are the situations rooting from unconsciousness. The ones who have gained the consciousness are being assimilated to the other ways. The only thing to do is to remind the past and to supply national consciousness. To state that the dialogue is more important than the conflict.
Mehmet Fatih ÖZTARSU
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The Aegean is a new retirement hot-spot
By Zoe Dare Hall
12th March 2009
Turkey is featuring prominently in the plans of Britons looking to retire overseas. With falling property prices, a warm and sunny climate and, crucially, no euro, the attractions are obvious.
One in eight British people over 55 will live abroad by next year, says the Institute for Public Policy Research. But the strength of the euro has made many would-be émigrés wary of old favourites such as the Costa del Sol, while the collapse of the property market in the U.S. has put people off crossing the Atlantic.
Instead, many people are looking to Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, where the vast majority of the 20,600 British owned properties are located, and where the cost of living is up to 60 per cent cheaper than in the UK.
Appealing: The ancient harbour at Bodrum, which is lively even out of season ‘Turkey is one of the few logical choices for those seeking to balance lifestyle and financial advantage in their retirement,’ says Julian Walker, from the Turkish property specialist Spot Blue.
‘The warm climate in the south allows people to spend a healthier life outdoors, and the cost of day-to-day living is significantly cheaper than back home.’
Stephen Hughes, director at Foreign Currency Direct, has seen a 36 per cent increase in British clients changing their sterling to lira in the past year, most of them pensioners retiring to Turkey.
‘The Turkish lira has increased by 6.5 per cent against the pound in the past year, which means that those who changed to lira find their money goes much further than before,’ says Hughes.
He also believes that house prices have risen by 10-15 per cent in the past 12 months.
Bodrum is undoubtedly one of the most appealing regions for those with retirement in mind. The countryside is dotted with olive groves and whitewashed houses.
Its glitzy marinas are lined with boutiques and yachts. And as a lively working town, Bodrum doesn’t shut down as soon as the summer tourists leave. In addition, easyJet is to fly to Bodrum from April 23.
At Cumberland’s Woodland Regency development, set in pine forests just outside Bodrum, apartments cost from £47,000, and three-bedroom houses from £158,000, with a shared spa, fitness centre and clubhouse on the site.
In Gundogan, a 15-minute drive from Bodrum, the Seaview Regency Prestige villas are the most striking example of value for money on a sought-after peninsula, with three-storey, three-bedroom villas costing from £175,000.
Each has indoor/outdoor living rooms that open onto private gardens, a shared pool and a citrus fruit valley leading to the sea.
Eric Kaya, director of Cumberland Properties, says: ‘There’s no building work in summer because this is where rich and influential Turks have their holiday homes, so it’s protected.’
Attracted by low prices, Britons have flocked to the Aegean resorts of Altinkum and Didim, where new apartments cost as little as £25,000.
More attractive and less developed is Dalaman, says Dominic Whiting, author of Buying In Turkey, who singles out The Hills development in Akkaya as among the best.
The three-bedroom villas near a golf course and marina cost from £149,000 – or apartments from £46,200 – through Curbanoglu Homes.
On the Mediterranean coast, Place Overseas is seeing interest from retiring Britons in Beycik, where detached, three to four-bedroom houses at Quattro Villas cost from £219,000 off-plan.
‘Turkey is not in the euro zone, which makes this an interesting investment for British buyers,’ says Cameron Deggin, UK director of Place Overseas.
Avoiding the euro zone was part of the appeal for Adam Jacks, 68, and his wife Julia, 59, who moved from Chester to their two-bedroom villa in Ovacik, near Fethiye on the Turkish Riviera, a year ago.
Mr Jacks says: ‘We combine a good level of living on a pension with a lot of sunshine.
The Daily Mail
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