Basic Barriers Provide Best Protection From Pandemic Flu

Med Headlines - Remember how your mother was always telling you to wash your hands so you wouldn’t spread germs? She was right, according to a report issued today in BMJ Online. The best weapons against a pandemic avian flu, if one develops, might be the simplest, according to a systematic review.

Inexpensive physical barriers, such as regular hand-washing and wearing masks, gloves and gowns may be more effective than reliance on antivirals or vaccines in preventing the spread of the virus, according to Dr. Chris Del Mar, who spearheaded the report. Dr. Del Mar and his colleagues reviewed 51 studies over four decades from the Cochrane Register Medline and other databanks on the effect of simple means of preventing the spread of respiratory infections.

The studies included animal-to-human, or human-to-human transmission with measures such as personal hygiene, distancing (isolation, quarantine, social distancing) and barrier protection compared with “do nothing” or with another intervention.

As a result, Dr. Del Mar and his colleagues recommend frequent hand-washing (with or without antiseptics), barrier measures and isolation of people with suspected respiratory infections. In an accompanying editorial, Dr. Martin Dawes of McGill University in Montreal, wrote that because pandemic flu is such a potentially catastrophic event, governments worldwide should have commissioned a review such as this many years ago and not have left it to the academic community to take the lead. “We have an annually updated guideline for the management of hypertension, and it reflects badly that one is not available for influenza,” Dr. Dawes said.