Ukraine flu outbreak widens, government announces control measures

Kiev - Ukraine's deadly flu outbreak widened on Wednesday, as government officials announced new emergency measures in an attempt to control the spread of the illness. More than 450,000 people were registered with national health authorities as suffering from the flu, of whom 11 had confirmed cases of swine flu, according to Helath Ministry spokesman Oleksander Velovol said. The nationwide death count from flu-related illnesses since late October stood at 81, Velovol said at a meeting with senior provincial officials aired on Channel 5 television. On Thursday, three confirmed deaths from the virulent swine flu strain were reported. Doctors in the central Kiev province were on Wednesday monitoring two possible swine flu cases, said Viktor Vakarash, chairman of the Kiev regional government, according to an Interfax news agency report. If confirmed, the two cases would mark the first jump of swine flu from Ukraine's western provinces, where the flu outbreak has been concentrated so far, to Ukraine's capital and largest metropolitan area. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said at a meeting that her government would enact more emergency measures to control the disease's spread and to combat retail shortages of anti-flu drugs, and protective anti-infection masks. Tymoshenko said the government would prepare a plan 'within a week' to establish a nationwide chain of state-run drug sales centres to combat what she called hoarding and price-gouging by the private health industry, according to a report by the Korrespondent website. The centres, each offering a limited assortment of some 100 basic anti-cold and flu drugs, would operate in government-run hospitals and clinics, and sell medical supplies at a marginal price mark-up, Tymoshenko said. Tymoshenko also instructed Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko to obtain a 'special pandemic price' in negotiations with international drug companies for emergency deliveries of anti-flu drugs to Ukraine, according to an Interfax news agency report. Government textile and clothes factories have received 1 million metres of gauze and cheesecloth from state reserves, Tymoshenko said,and emergency production of surgical masks was beginning, according to a TSN television news report. Initial deliveries of cloth masks would reach the general public in seven days 'sufficient to provide every Ukrainian citizen two masks,' she said. Factories in Kharkiv and the hard-hit Lviv region would produce the masks, according to Ukrainian media reports. Tymoshenko on Monday said that if necessary, her government would commit 6 million metres of gauze and cheesecloth to the emergency mask production programme.