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Welcome to the new part of our web-site. As you see this is dedicated to providing up to date news and background information about the current Swine-Flu pandemic.
You will notice that this section of the web-site sports various different colours and backgrounds. As well as distinguishing these pages from the rest of the web-site, we are trying out different colour schemes to see how they look! So don't be shy tell us what you think, nice fresh colours or looks like dog vomit ? All comments or suggestions gratefully received. For anyone who can be bothered, suggest a colour scheme, anything you like and I will do a page in those colours. Just a bit of fun but can I get a response ? Send me an e-mail with your comments / suggestions.
The menu on the left will take you to various areas to answer some of the more frequent questions and provide information as up to date as possible. Scroll down, there is more of it than you might expect.
Looking back after
March 2010
Fortunately for us, despite all of the dire predictions, it never quite happened. The dreadful plague reached its peak in early November then seemed to run out of steam. Even by Christmas it was clear that the predicted Aporkalypse was not going to happen. The main reason for this is would seem to be that we just got lucky. This time !!
The particular strain of H1 N1 Flu
was never that much of a bug in the first place, lacking the genetic something that turns an average Flu into a virus that kills millions.
What is perhaps a slightly sobering thought is that this had nothing to do with us or our fancy drugs. A tiny little twist of genetic chance ment that we got a comparatively mild strain, it still killed thousands of fit, productive and much loved people, but not millions.
Life has moved on. As it does !
However. What do we do with 58 million spare doses of Tamiflu that will soon pass its use-by date?
So how close was it to disaster ?
Just one tiny, tiny little genetic mutation, in just one strand of it's DNA . And that is extremely close!
Maybe it was luck, maybe it was divine intervention, who knows. Sadly though it was nothing whatever to do with us, our hospitals, our drugs or our vaccines. Had we had no effective drugs, as in every previous epidemic, then those who did die would still be dead. Of the millions of people who became ill with Swine Flu, the vast majority ( 98% or more) got better anyway, as they always do. This includes the hundreds of thousands who clogged up health services in a world-wide panic. Fuming at their Governments lack of, or ineffective action, those in prosperous countries made much noise to get whatever drugs they thought they needed, and they got better. Those who did not live in prosperous countries or who didn't manage to get hold of drugs, got better too (well that's a shock isn't it !!) A few, probably very, very few, got better because of Tamiflu or whatever they took . It is probably safe to say that those who ended up needing Intensive Care but who recovered, would not have done so without the drugs and other care that they had.
In The UK a pproximately 1% of people with Swine-Flu needed hospital admission, and of them approximately 5% needed Intensive Care. So about 5 people out of every 10,000 who catch Swine-Flu, needed Intensive care, and 2 of them died. This is of course a tragedy for them and their families, but it does mean that out of every 10,000 cases, 9,998 got better. Some will only have survived because of Tamiflu or other drugs, but very few.
November 5th 2009
As the number of cases continues to rise, a rather disturbing trend is emerging. Whilst Swine-flu continues to be a mild illness for the vast majority of patients, when complications do arise, a substantial proportion of people become very ill indeed, and these are not necessarily those with underlying conditions. Out of the people with pig-flu who have been ill enough to need hospital care, current figures show that 20% are needing intensive care facilities. This is worrying for two reasons. Firstly, the UK is woefully short of intensive care beds, and secondly the proportion needing Intensive Care is rising.
These figures should not overly alarm you. Remember that most people will get a mild illness (if I had a pound for every time I wrote that...).
It is simply worth pointing out that just because you are a healthy person with healthy children, it does not mean that swine flu cannot turn your life upside down.
On a more positive note, most of those who end up in intensive care will recover completely. But having seen patients on life support because of H1N1, I can assure you this is not a virus to dismiss out of hand.
October 29 2009
As the mass vaccination campaign slowly gets going the need for it becomes ever more clear. Whilst the rate of increase in case numbers is slower than it was earlier in the year, the numbers grow steadily larger. The past week saw approx 53,000 new cases. Of concern are the 99 patients admitted to critical care because of Flu, and the disproportionate rise in deaths amongst pregnant women.
Even from here one can see that vaccionation in pregnancy is going to be a hot issue this autumn. There is an inbuilt reluctance to advise pregnabt women to have medication of any sort. There is no such thing as a drug or treatment that has been proved to be safe for use in pregnancy. There never will be one either, for the simple reason that it is impossible to get such proof. To do this a trial would need to be set up where thousands of pregnant women were given drug x to see how much it harmed them or their unborn children. Realistically outside of a Nazi style concentration camp this sort of research is not going to happen.
What we can say with certainty is that there are more Swine Flu deaths amongst pregnant women than would be expected from the numbers of cases. Lots more deaths. So what do we do here then ? Whilst the data is very limited some pregnant women have been vaccinated in various countries. Some because they were not aware they were pregnant at the time of the vaccination, or because a decision was made that this was the appropriate course of action for that women. So far no data has emerged to suggest that vaccination has caused a problem, but it is very early. This vaccine has not been around for long, it will be another year at least before there will be full data on a meaningful number of women and their pregnancies. Obviously pregnancy lasts 9 months so there is a limit as to how much it is possible to "hurry up" the results.
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