Ukraine: State Sanitary Service Predicts Influenza And ARVI Incidence Rate To Grow In November

 September 26, 2012

The State Sanitary and Epidemiological Service predicts that the influenza and acute respiratory viral infections incidence rate will grow in November, agency chairman, Anatolii Ponomarenko, has told a news briefing.

"There are preliminary forecasts on the incidence rate scaling up in November. An early wave is not planned in October, which we had judging from the monitoring experience," he said.
Ponomarenko remarks, at the moment the situation in the country regarding the influenza and ARVI incidence rate is stable, manageable and controllable.

In his turn, deputy minister of healthcare Oleksandr Tolstanov characterised preparedness of medical institutions for the epidemiological season.

"The system of medical institutions and the system of sanitary and epidemiological stations, their laboratories is absolutely ready for the possibility of both definition of virus type and of rendering appropriate level of aid patients need," he said.

Besides, as to Tolstanov, they arranged a reserve of beds for patients, more than 30,000 for today, for probable breakout of incidence.

Apart from this, in his words, they compiled and approved a list of medications that must be available at medical treatment facilities.

Tolstanov underlines, more than 12 million packs of medicines are now in the retail chains, required for provision of medical aid in cases of acute respiratory viral infections, including more than 2.7 million packs of vaccines.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Healthcare Ministry predicted incidence rate of acute respiratory viral infections in the 2011/12 epidemiological season of more than 8 million people.

The Healthcare Ministry expects influenza incidence rate to grow from November in the 2011/12 epidemiological season.
 
The 2010/11 epidemiological season brought 20 lethal cases of influenza and ARVI (there was no epidemy), while the 2009/2010 season 1,126 (there was an epidemy).