Sunday 10 December 2017

How Deadly Is The H1N1 Swine Flu?

As the authorities finally get a grip on the outbreak of H1N1 swine flu at Kumasi Academy,  one's prayer, is that no one in Ghana's political world will seek to make political capital, out of what in a very real sense is a national  tragedy.

What we must rather do, as a people, is to learn useful lessons from a tragedy that clearly is a systemic failure, which has exposed to the whole world, just how unprepared for pandemics our nation actually is.

That is intolerable in a nation with a world-class talent-pool, such as ours. Hmm, Oman Ghana - eyeasem o: Asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa.

The question we must all ponder over is: Is it not scandalous that rather than quarantining all those who work and learn at Kumasi Academy - as a protective measure for the greater good of Ghanaian society generally - panicking parents were allowed to withdraw their wards from the school, despite the fact that at a point in time no one in officialdom hadn't the faintest idea what was killing  those unfortunate  victims who it now turns out succumbed to H1N1 swine flu?

Based on the initial response to the outbreak of H1N1 swine flu at Kumasi Academy, and given our love  affair with funerals (ditto dead bodies), one wonders how we will cope as a people, hypothetically, should there be an outbreak of an unknown - God forbid- strain of the Ebola virus somewhere in Ghana, for example.

Rather than continuing to allow wealthy crooks to steal taxpayers' money through dubious and outrageous public procurement contracts, should we not use creative measures (such as  rewarding whistleblowers financially) to protect the public purse, so that we can have the wherewithall to resource our public research institutions well enough to be self-sufficient - for example - in diagnosing even the strangest of diseases in Ghana? Haaba.

And has the time not now come for all the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in Ghana to partner private entrepreneurs to built creamatoria nationwide as a public health measure - and lucrative revenue sources - as some of us have urged ever since the outbreak of the Ebola pandemic in our sister nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone? Ebeeii.

Above all, we must not allow foreign drug manufacturers to endanger the security of our country, by placing the distribution of their products in Ghana, in the hands of foreign companies registered here for that purpose. That must end immediately. Full stop.

Parliament ought to swiftly pass a law banning the practice under a certificate of urgency - for the manufacture and distribution of drugs is a national security issue.  Haaba.

Finally, for the benefit of this blog's many young readers, today, we are posting a culled article about the H1N1 swine flu, from Time magazine entitled: "How Deadly Is H1N1?" by Brian Walsh - from whom we have borrowed the title of this particular blog post.

Please read on:

"TIME
SIGN IN SUBSCRIBE
Home
U.S.
Politics
World
Business
Tech
Health
Motto
Entertainment
Science
Newsfeed
Living
Sports
History
The TIME Vault
Magazine
Ideas
Parents
TIME Labs
Money
LIFE
The Daily Cut
Photography
Videos
TIME Shop
American Voices
2016 Rio Olympics
Next Generation Leaders
The 100 Most Influential People
Person of the Year 2015
Top of the World
A Year In Space
Subscribe
Newsletters
Feedback
Privacy Policy
Your California Privacy Rights
Terms of Use
Ad Choices Ad Choices
RSS
TIME Apps
TIME for Kids
Advertising
Reprints and Permissions
Site Map
Help
Customer Service
© 2016 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Subscribe

5 Burning Questions About Swine Flu

In the month since the new H1N1 flu virus first emerged, public health officials have come a long way in profiling the disease. But several key questions remain, including, How afraid should we be?

        inShare

Prev Next
View All
The H1N1 Epidemic
How Deadly Is H1N1?
By Bryan WalshMonday, May 25, 2009
dek
AP

The H1N1 virus

One thing we know now is that H1N1 is not as serious as health officials first feared, when reports of large numbers of flu deaths began emerging from Mexico a month ago. As the World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have emphasized repeatedly over the past several weeks, nearly all of the more than 12,000 infections worldwide have been fairly mild, with few patients needing hospitalization. The small percentage who have had serious disease or died have also often had pre-existing health problems that may have complicated the infection. A CDC survey of 30 Californians who were hospitalized with H1N1 by May 17 found that two-thirds of the patients had at least one underlying health condition, including chronic lung or heart disease, diabetes and obesity — a condition that by itself can hinder breathing and complicate flu infections. Five patients were pregnant, which may also increase the risk of flu complications, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director of the CDC's science and public health program.

But not every victim was sick with something else. One of the most recent H1N1-related deaths in the U.S., a 44-year-old man in Missouri, involved no pre-existing conditions. And that points to another characteristic of the virus that concerns health officials — it tends to infect the relatively young. While the California cases varied widely in age, from 29 days to 89 years, the median age was 27.5 years. Overall, about 40% of those hospitalized with H1N1 in the U.S. have been between 18 and 50; more than 60% of all infections, including those that did not require hospitalization, have been in people younger than 25.

That's unusual for the flu — and worrying for doctors, since the last time a flu struck down the young and healthy was during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Further, the new H1N1 appears to spread more easily than the seasonal flu, according to a preliminary study in Science.

The good news, at least for older people, is that they may have greater natural immunity to the new flu, possibly because they have been exposed to more flu viruses in the past — some of which were similar to swine flu. In an early lab test conducted by the CDC, scientists injected the H1N1 virus into blood samples that were taken from healthy adults before swine flu emerged. Antibodies to the flu were found in at least 30% of the samples from adults 60 and older, suggesting some amount of protection against the virus; the same immunity was seen in fewer than one in 10 samples from younger people.

See pictures of the effects of swine flu in Mexico.

Next Should We Close Schools with H1N1?

    Email
    Print
    Share

Follow @TIME
Sponsored Stories
Sponsored Links by
EBONY Shares Story of Beauty Bakerie and CEO Cashmere Nicole
EBONY Shares Story of Beauty Bakerie and CEO Cashmere Nicole
Beauty Bakerie
EBONY Shares Story of Beauty Bakerie and CEO Cashmere Nicole
Features

    Feeling Egypt's Pig Slaughter
    Soccer in the Time of Swine Flu
    Thermal Scanners Hunt for Swine Flu
    Swine Flu Hits Mexico
    TIME's Swine Flu Coverage

© 2016 Time Inc. All rights reserved."

End of culled Time Magazine article by Brian Walsh.





  •  


No comments: