MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina convenes regional meeting to address H1N1 pandemic

Minister Juan Manzur will host the Buenos Aires meeting Wednesday

Argentina called for a meeting of regional Public Health ministers to address the A/H1N1 virus situation and try to harmonize measures to counterattack the pandemic, announced the Ministry of Health in an official release.

“The heads of the Health Ministries from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay will be meeting Wednesday in Buenos Aires to analyze the state of the situation with the A/H1N1 virus in the region and to harmonize joint measures to confront the pandemic”, said the release.

Argentine Health Minister Juan Manzur extended the invitations to his peers and said each official will give an account of the situation in their home country.

Antonio Pagés representative from the Pan-American Health Organization is scheduled to give an in depth report on the conclusions from the recent world Health ministers meeting in Mexico, sponsored by the World Health organization.

Basically the agenda will address for ways to harmonize policies and measures instrumented in each of the countries invited to Buenos Aires; government provision of anti-virus and fair access to vaccines when they become available in the market.

Finally a common strategy is planned for the release of information on the pandemic.

Argentina which is hosting the meeting is the country with the third highest number of reported and confirmed deaths, 94, of the virus H1N1, only surpassed by United States, 211 and Mexico, 121.

In the Southern Cone Chile last Friday officially reported 24 deaths and 9.549 positive cases; Uruguay, 10 confirmed deaths and 520 confirmed cases; Paraguay, 3 deaths and 500 cases; Brazil 2 deaths and over a thousand confirmed cases and Bolivia, two deaths.

In related news the demand to travel to Argentina for the winter school holidays dropped 80% according to the Brazilian Travel Agencies association, Abav.

“The impact has been very serious, violent for Argentina, because in July tens of thousands of Brazilians travel to Argentina and Bariloche for winter sports”, said Leonel Rossi Junior, head of International Affairs from Abav.

Last week Argentina declared a “sanitary holiday” so as to complete a long weekend beginning Thursday 9, Independence Day. Several provinces have also declared a “state of emergency”.

Brazilian GOL airlines also reported that in the last three weeks the number of passengers flying to Argentina has dropped by 50% compared to a year ago.