Swine Flu Primer
What is H1N1? It's a virus which has gene segments from the swine, avian and human flu virus. Scientists have christened it influenza-a (h1n1) virus, commonly known as swine flu.

What's A Pandemic? An epidemic of infectious disease that spreads through human populations across a large region. On June 11, the who declared h1n1 a pandemic.

Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human.

But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it.

The number of Swine Flu patients detected in Sri Lanka is rising day by day, Health officials said.

According to Dr. Geetani Wickremasinghe of Medical Research Institute in Colombo another two people suffering from swine flu have been detected yesterday.

Both patients who were from Australia, including a ten-year-old boy have reached the country on last Sunday.

According to a health ministry press statement, Bangladesh on June 19 detected the first case of deadly swine flu in a body of a non-resident Bangladeshi who just returned from the USA.
Patients with specific flu-like symptoms- a fever above 40 degrees C, cough or other respiratory symptoms- are presumed to have the new virus.

A novel influenza A (H1N1) virus has spread rapidly across the globe. Judging its pandemic potential is difficult with limited data, but nevertheless essential to inform appropriate health responses. By analyzing the outbreak in Mexico, early data on international spread, and viral genetic diversity, we make an early assessment of transmissibility and severity.

When World Health Organization (WHO) chief Margaret Chan declared last week that for the first time in more than 40 years the world is facing an influenza pandemic, she simply stated what everybody already knew.

Sri Lankan health officials yesterday detected a second patient with swine flu (H1N1). The second patient is a six-year-old boy who was a cousin of the first patient, an eight-year-old boy, and arrived in Sri Lanka with the same family.

The family of eight, residents of Australia, arrived in the country last weekend via Singapore to attend a wedding.

On 27 April, 6 days after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first reported an unusual swine flu outbreak in humans, international agencies were still struggling to determine how serious a threat the virus posed.

Pages