Thursday, December 10, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States issued a new strategy Wednesday for dealing with a rising threat from biological weapons but stopped short of measures to give teeth to an existing international convention. Instead, the White House said it would step up protections against biological attacks by increasing vigilance and global access to information on disease outbreaks and strengthening norms of scientific conduct. "We will continue to face new and emerging biological threats that will require the coordinated and concerted efforts of a broad range of domestic and international partners," President Barack Obama said in releasing the strategy. The White House paper said risks traditionally associated with state-run germ warfare programs have spread in recent years to extremist groups as technological advances have made it easier and cheaper to produce biological agents. While the United States has made strides over the past eight years in recognizing and responding to acts of bioterrorism, it said less attention has been paid to developing strategies to prevent attacks. "Although it is entirely feasible to mitigate the impact of even a large-scale biological attack upon a city's population, doing so incurs a significant cost and effort," the paper said. "We therefore need to place increased priority on actions to further reduce the likelihood that such an attack might occur." The paper sets out a series of objectives for the new strategy, broadly aimed at protecting against "the misuse of the life sciences to develop or use biological agents that cause harm."These include efforts to increase access to knowledge and products that can reduce the impact of outbreaks of infectious disease. It calls for activities to reinforce "a culture of responsibility, awareness and vigilance" in the life sciences, and steps to safeguard scientific knowledge and capabilities that could be vulnerable to misuse.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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