Australia’s efforts at combating AH1/N1

Though an island nation and far removed from the built up populations of Europe and Asia, Australia has not escaped the recent ‘swine flu’ outbreak.

Earlier this week a 32-year-old woman and her eight-year-old daughter from Melbourne were two more recently confirmed cases, bringing the countries total number to 25, with more expected.

55 people were also being currently tested for the virus around the country.

Five schools have so far been closed in response to the disease; whilst new measures such as using health declaration cards on all docking cruise ships and keeping children who had traveled to A/H1N1 affected countries away from school have been introduced.

Ambassador Raby responded that the country was doing everything in its power to manage the outbreak.

He mentioned that it had been coordinating with the WHO, which also has an office here in Beijing, and was confident the outbreak would be brought under control in the near future.