My last blog on president Yushchenko’s national address on the flu epidemic has been placed in Taras Kuzio’s
’Ukrainska Pravda’ Blog. There’s has been quite a number of comments, some mentioning the
impracticality of the president possibly cancelling last Wednesday’s
European Champion’s League soccer game in Kyiv, even though the WHO had
warned the epidemic was quickly spreading to the Kyiv area.
All
I can say is that in response to a flu epidemic in Mexico City, which
has about 20 million inhabitants, important soccer games and baseball
games were
played in empty stadiums, or in parts of the country less affected by flu last April, at great cost to the clubs and their owners.
It
is not my intention to down-play the effects of the current flu
epidemic in Ukraine - several friends of mine and their families have
been seriously affected.
Many people will
suffer from swine flu even in those countries were large sums of money
have been spent to provide adequate supplies of antiviral drugs,
vaccines, intensive care facilities, and laboratories to quickly
identify new strains of flu virus in patients. In Ukraine, where there
are serious shortages in all of these, swine flu is inevitably going to
hit hard. And sadly, there is no reason to expect the medical
profession in the country to be any less corrupt or uphold ethical
standards better than other members of Ukrainian society.
But
Ukraine’s leading politicians and parties should not use the epidemic
for scoring cheap political points against their rivals. Most of the
electorate know that no-one would have performed any better that their
rivals in this situation.