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Thais wearing disposable masks pose during a campaign promoting the use of face masks to prevent infection by the H1N1 flu virus, at a hospital in Nonthaburi province, on the outskirts of Bangkok, July 13, 2009. (Xinhua/Reuter Photo)
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GENEVA, July 21 (Xinhua) -- The A/H1N1 flu death toll
has exceeded 700 worldwide since the outbreak of the disease in April, the World
Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.
The WHO, which declared the flu as a pandemic on June
11, said it was up to national health authorities to decide what kind of
measures they should take to mitigate the effect of the pandemic.
"Different countries would be facing the pandemic at
different levels at different times. So it is really up to countries to consider
what mitigation measures suit them in regard to the situation in individual
countries," WHO spokeswoman Alphaluck Bhatiasevi told a news briefing.
The WHO said last week that the A/H1N1 flu has been
spreading at unprecedented speed, and further spread within countries being
affected and to new countries is considered inevitable.
So far, more than 130 countries and regions have been
affected by the pandemic, with many of them experiencing sustainable community
transmission.
The WHO has recommend countries with large-scale
outbreaks to stop confirming all cases through laboratory tests, as "this
strategy is absorbing most national laboratory and response capacity, leaving
little capacity for the monitoring and investigation of severe cases and other
exceptional events."
The UN agency stressed the need to closely monitor
unusual events, such as clusters of cases of severe or fatal virus infection,
clusters of respiratory illness requiring hospitalization, or unexplained or
unusual clinical patterns associated with serious or fatal cases.
The A/H1N1 pandemic has been characterized, to date,
by the mildness of symptoms in the overwhelming majority of patients, who
usually recover, even without medical treatment, within a week of the onset of
symptoms.
