At last count, 87,000 people had been affected by the influenza A virus or H1N1 — or swine flu — as it is more commonly known. The largest number has been affected in the US, at over 27,000. In all, 428 people have died worldwide. In India, 116 people had been affected till July 1. The World Health Organi-zation (WHO) has declared it a pandemic. Should we panic?

There is a need to take every precaution, but perhaps, not hit the alarm buttons. Even if influenza pandemics have a bad history, the world today is better prepared than it was in the last three pandemics. In the US, President Obama has called for a flu preparedness summit on July 9 to prepare for a possibile outbreak of a more severe flu.

The New York Post has rep-orted, citing federal official sou-rces, that some 500,000 New Yorkers might have been infected with the H1N1 virus. Alth-ough the WHO has called the effect of virus moderate at the moment, it has also warned of a recurrence.

The outbreak began in Mexico early this year, and there is evidence that the country was already in the grip of an epidemic for months before it was recognised. WHO anticipates some vaccines would be ready by Sept-ember 2009, but its availability may be limited. Two or three

vaccine injections are required for maximum immunity from swine flu and seasonal influenza. There is also concern that the virus could mutate later in the year and become more virulent and less susceptible to any new vaccine.

Considering the measures being taken, one could ask as to how dangerous it could get. According to WHO, annual seasonal or normal flu epidemics affect 5 per cent to 15 per cent of the global population. Alth-ough most cases are mild, these still cause severe illness in 3 to 5 million people resulting in 250,000–500,000 deaths worldwide. Assuming that 300 million to 1 billion people are affected by the seasonal flu, the fatality rate would come to around 0.05 per cent every year.

Compared with this, the present swine flu has killed 428 against infection of 87,399 rep-orted cases according to WHO data. That gives us a fatality rate of about 0.5 per cent, or almost 10 times more than the seasonal flu. That could be a cause for major concern. WHO director-general Margaret Chan said at a recent H1N1 conference in Cancun that there was a need to take major steps “towards building new collective defences against a menace that affects

us all.”

The Mexican flu is not the first of its kind. According to ED Kilborne, who wrote about “Influenza pandemics of the 20th century” in his journal, the three major global epidemics in the past one hundred years were the Spanish flu in 1918, the Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968.

These pandemics were caused by strains of influenza A virus that had undergone genetic changes to which the people did not have immunity. The Asian and Honk Kong flu — caused by H2N2 and H3N2 viral strains — had fatality rates of less than 0.1 per cent, killing between one million and two million people, respectively.

But the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, caused by the H1N1 strain, with a fatality rate in excess of 3 per cent, killed between 50 millin and 100 million people worldwide, according to estimates by the US-based Centers for Disease Control, almost equivalent to one-third of the population of Europe.

Speaking at the Cancun conference, Mexican President Felipe Calderon stressed, “No government can win this battle alone.” Mexico has seen 116 deaths since the disease was detected in April 2009.

In India, the central government has directed the states to strengthen isolation facilities and critical care at the district. According to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad rapid response teams, comprising doctors drawn from various streams, were ready to be deployed to manage community outbreak situations. Although not freely available except at the government hospitals in India, Oseltamivir is the medicine that has been reported to be effective against the swine flu strain — if taken within the first 24 to 48 hours of catching the virus.

The government is reported to have stockpiled about 10 million capsules with another six million available with pharmaceutical companies. The Pune-based Serum Institute is in the process of producing the H1N1 vaccine, expected to be ready by early next year. Hopefully, the preparations made globally for a widespread attack may not be required. But if they are, the virus would probably be defeated without much lesser toll

than before.

The writer is a doctoral scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh