On the 27th October 2010 it was reported that data had emerged showing that there were 70 children and teenagers killed as a result of the recent influenza A H1N1, swine flu. Prof Liam Donaldsons team showed that children from certain ethnic backgrounds were more affected than those of other groups, although the reason why is still unclear and indeed was an unexpected finding. The report also found that patients with pre-existing conditions such as neurological conditions were also at risk.
We are aware that the virus is likely to undergo changes and remerge in the coming flu season, how it will behave is still uncertain as we cannot predict accurately what genetic changes may occur. It is generally thought that H1N1 is likely to appear as the seasonal flu during this season but we will have to wait and see.
As the pandemic virus proved to be a lot less deadly than first feared, criticism has been made of the government’s response. It has been suggested that there might have been financial savings to have been made if a more measured response had been made. This is an unfair criticism on the whole as we did not know how the pandemic would develop so it was difficult to predict the perfect response. Two key things are clear, the first is that the full blown plan that was put into place played an important role in saving life and secondly, children especially those in vulnerable groups should be vaccinated against swine flu in the light of this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment