The Latest on H1N1 Swine Flu

World Health Organization has been regularly sending updates over the last few years about the state of diseases in the world and the forecasts are not good. According to WHO, we are long overdue for a disease that can and will affect more than 90% of the world population causing a dramatic decline in world population. When AIDS first became well known, several health specialists concluded that this was the big one: the apocalypse killer. But we now seem to have several contenders that are racing for the same throne and title and H1N1 seems to be the front runner.

H1N1 or Swine Flu as it’s popularly known has spread like wild fire all over the world in a short, short span of about three months. Now, you and I can easily be confused into thinking that this is a new disease that has just appeared on the horizon from some god forsaken hole but we couldn’t be more wrong! Swine flu is an old hand that has been around for several years now. Several outbreaks have been recorded where the disease occurs in humans due to mutations in the main virus that causes the disease. The disease itself is very common in pigs with over half of the breeding pig stocks in the US having antibodies of the virus present in their bodies. Workers who work closely with pig herds almost always have antibodies to the virus present in their blood stream even though they do not show symptoms. Although experts have advised the properly cooking the meat will kill any virus still present; we are not yet convinced. The sheer rapidity with which the disease infected several thousand people over the world in the last few months was horrifying to behold. The entire state of Mexico from where the disease originated shut down for a month to limit the spread of the disease.

But the disease still managed to spread all over the world and that fact itself is really scary. According to the latest statistics, the disease managed to spread to almost every country in the world in a few months time. Direct transmission of the disease was only possible by direct interaction with animals and most farm workers are already inoculated against older strains of the disease and they are tracked to prevent infections. As a result, most animal to human infections have occurred due to the virus undergoing a mutation and then jumping hosts to form a completely new infective human strain. And this mutation caused another problem. The vaccination already being produced was not effective against the new strain of the human infective H1N1. The current treatment protocol for the infection is to use anti viral drugs to control the infection and reduce the effect of the symptoms. Side effects are common and the antiviral drugs are expensive. But research is still on and pharmaceutical companies are racing to find a cure or a vaccine for the new strain of the vaccine. A vaccine is being tried out with clinical trials and the new vaccine could be ready for distribution as early as November 2009