What research and who by has been done into Swine Flu?

Answer 1

The research is ongoing. There has already been commendable and significant research done by the departments of health in most, if not all, nations in the world. The UK, Mexico, Canada and US have been involved in research from the beginning and as cases began spreading in the western Northern Hemisphere from the origin in North America.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) took the lead in much of the early research, evaluation and monitoring and served the role as the centers of coordination of the research. Even now they continue as the pandemic is in the Post Pandemic Phase.

As it was determined that new vaccines were going to be needed as soon as possible to prevent illness and death in potentially huge, but unknown at the time, proportions of public infections as well as to control the epidemics and hopefully avert a pandemic, drug manufacturers also began research and development of a vaccine. The Food and Drug Administration of the US along with the CDC began evaluating and encouraging the rapid vaccine development for approval for use.

The epidemiologists, doctors, microbiologists, and other scientists of the various world communicable disease organizations, Universities, and US States' public health departments and their counterparts in other nations frantically worked to research, formulate plans for control, prevention, and treatment and emergency interventions, to roll out plans for vaccine development and distribution, to create guidelines and recommendations for work and school and to prepare and communicate other public education on prevention and treatment.

Hospitals and health care providers researched and monitored their policies for infection control, prepared for potential catastrophic numbers of patients, and researched methods to meet the needs.

The US State Department and Transportation authorities researched and developed recommendations and safeguards in travel and issued those recommendations. The US Department of Homeland Security had a role in travel recommendations and research on control of disease and also issued suggestions for evaluation and treatment of those entering and leaving the US. The airlines researched and developed their disease control processes as did other public transportation providers. Other nations and health departments and other disease control authorities followed suit. It was a huge world wide collaborative and cooperative effort to study and meet to determine special needs of individual locations as well as coordination of efforts and communication among themselves and to the public.

Media outlets scrambled for information and to report as quickly as possible life-saving recommendations from their research of all the other research and to present their expert evaluations of all.

This was considerably a joint effort, but the World Health Organization took the lead role as a clearing house of information and official communications of the progress of research and development world wide. The NHS in the UK took a lead in European R&D, the US CDC was prepared, staffed, and funded, and therefore, able to lead some of the more scientific research, laboratory monitoring and recommendations, and development of laboratory and field medical diagnostic tools.

Private corporations, besides the pharmaceutical companies, researched for development of products for hygiene, infection control, symptomatic relief for over-the-counter and other product development to meet the needs and address growing concerns of the public for prevention and treatment.

Public and private education entities researched to develop models and plans to evaluate intervention needs, school closure plans if needed, student monitoring and care, and communications from their science departments involved in the research and communications to their communities.

Answers.com staff and volunteers played an educational role through WikiAnswers Q&A and spent considerable hours of timely research to quickly respond to the thousands of questions of the public and to correct the common dissemination of misinformation and to quell fears and control public panic. See the link to the Answers.com H1N1 Pandemic Swine Flu category of questions in the related links section below.

All of the human and animal health organizations researched to provide guides to their medical professional members such as the American Medical Association (AMA), American Hospital Association (AHA), AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), ACOG (American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists), AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) and similar associations and medical boards in the US and counterparts in the rest of the world.