Swine flu: so far, so good

Admittedly some headlines have inflated the pandemic's severity, which may have provoked an excessive response from some public authorities. Egypt, for example, has been criticised for its decision to slaughter all its pigs - roughly 300,000 - earlier this month.

But in general, reporting has been responsible and accurate, neither underplaying nor exaggerating the threat, whilst scrutinising issues such as the need to treat the developing world fairly.

It seems that the lessons of earlier pandemics have been well learned. Chan herself is familiar with these; public concern in China over the SARS outbreaks was only exacerbated by attempts to restrict media coverage (see "China must do yet more to promote scientific openness"). And the WHO, burned by injudicious comments from one of its top officials during the bird flu epidemic, has been more measured in its comments (see "Bird flu: the role of science journalists").

There are still lessons to be learned from the current outbreak, such as the time it took Mexican authorities to recognise the new strain, or the lack of adequate diagnostic facilities in many parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa.

But if the case for vigilance remains high, so does that for recognising the critically important role of an informed media in monitoring how public health authorities perform in developed and developing countries alike.