WHO public health research agenda for influenza

Overview

In order to evaluate the impact of WHO’s initiative to encourage research on better prevention and control of influenza globally, a biannual progress review was conducted. WHO Secretariat, with help from the scientific committee, identified high priority public health research topics from the five main research areas (‘Streams’) and commissioned literature reviews for each. Over 4000 citations of publications from 2010–2011 in more than 200 journals or other peer-reviewed publications were found through the literature reviews and database searches for this Progress Report. Defining the major achievements reflected in this large number of publications relies to a degree on subjective evaluations; however, without doubt, research related to understanding the emergence and progression of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic dominated the body of work. Publications related to specific pharmacologic interventions, influenza vaccines and antivirals, also predominated in the published work, representing more than half of the total. The work also represents a truly international effort to address influenza, with many of the publications in non-English language journals.

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Public health research agenda for influenza