Vaccination

The internet deals a lot with flu, but mostly talks about care and little about prevention. This is the result of a study made by Voices from the Blogs, a spin-off of the University of Milan, on the web-sentiment on influenza and vaccination in Italy.

Attention to sex and gender in biomedical, health and clinical research is an important quality and safety issue. Medicinal products are safer and more effective for everyone when clinical research includes diverse population groups. Historically, women’s health issues have focused on reproductive health, followed by gender issues such as behaviour, socio-economic factors, culture, lifestyles and influence biological development and health.

In the wake of the 2009-2010 H1N1-pandemic, also known as the swine flu, a web of mistrust between the public and health authorities was spun. National pandemic plans were usually based on a single scenario that was more severe than the actual 2009 pandemic, and that was extrapolated from the severity of previous outbreaks like SARS and Avian flu. In effect the 2009 pandemic was nicknamed the false-pandemic or ‘the pandemic there never was’. However, national health authorities had declared a pandemic and bought vaccines for billions.