Frank and critical review of swine flu wanted by WHO chief
Date: April 21 2010 at 07:25 p.m IST
To review the response of the outbreak which occurred last year WHO is starting a meeting of experts on Monday.
A committee of 29 experts from various universities and ministries meet on Monday to review about the response of the national outbreak last year.
The meeting would last for three days.
The committee will begin their assessment of international pandemic response and they will also identify the lessons learned for the future.
Decisions regarding the vaccination have also been added to the review.
Officials of WHO said that they need a sound alarm when the H1N1 virus again start to spread since no one will know how the national outbreak will turn again.
More than 17,500 deaths were confirmed worldwide due to swine flu since last year April.
The initial findings of the committee will be presented in May and the detailed and final report will be published next year.
Spreading of this H1N1 virus is same as the spreading of seasonal viruses. Normally flu viruses spread through coughing and sneezing by the infected person. Sometimes when people touch a virus affected thing and then touch their nose or mouth they are affected. So in general this swine flu also spread in the same way.
Another way of spreading this virus is having contact with the pigs that are affected by H1N1 virus. And having contact with the environmental impurities that might carry this virus. But generally this virus is found to spread mainly from person to person by the activities of coughing and sneezing of an infected person.
People affected with the swine flu are treated as highly communicable as long as the symptoms retain in them. Normally this flu have their effect on a person for about 7 days and children might have this effect for a long time so they are treated with more care. H1N1 affected people can affect other peoples from the day before the symptoms starts and up to 7 days till the symptoms retain in them. So a person is able to infect others even before he/she is aware that they are affected by that disease.
Satisfactory news is that this H1N1 virus does not spread through food. Even eating pork does not spread this virus. Since cooking of pork to a temperature of about 160°F kills the swine virus.
Usually no virus in the animal body seems to affect the human and no virus in the human affect the animals but this highly infected H1N1 virus has the ability to affect the humans from pig and vice versa.
