Pestilence Watch: It’s back- H1N1 deaths reported in Mexico and Greece

January 22, 2012 – MEXICO – An outbreak of A(H1N1) swine flu claimed the lives of two people — 19 and 21 years old — in Mexico’s capital in the first weeks of the year, health authorities said Saturday. The health secretary of Mexico’s Federal District, Armando Ahued, said there were 138 confirmed cases of the flu, including 110 cases of A(H1N1), a novel strain of the swine flu that was first detected in 2009. Nationwide, 333 cases of the virus have been confirmed, the federal government’s health secretary said earlier in the week, without saying how many deaths had been attributed to it. The latest victims were a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old who died in separate hospitals. “The tendency toward an increase in flu cases is normal because January is the month with the lowest temperatures,” said Ahued adding that the incidence of flu should begin to subside in February. The first outbreak of the A(H1N1) virus occurred in April, 2009 in Mexico and the United States, and quickly became a global pandemic that claimed the lives of 17,000 people. In Mexico alone, more than 1,250 people died. –AFP 

Greece: A seven- month- old Libyan baby died in an Athens Children’s hospital on Friday in the first fatality linked to the H1N1 flu virus of the new year in Greece, local authorities reported. According to local media reports citing Greek doctors who treated the boy, he had been infected with the virus in Libya, where he was diagnosed with common flu and received insufficient therapy, before transferred to Greece. An Ukrainian woman who is being treated in another Greek hospital for pneumonia is the second severe case of the swine flu to be reported in the country this season. Last year deaths caused by the H1N1 virus in Greece climbed exceeded the 100 victims and many more patients were treated for complications caused by the virus which first emerged in 2009 in Asia and developed into a worldwide pandemic. Greek Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (KEELPNO) experts noted that Greece does not face a high risk so far this year, but suggested to people of vulnerable groups that reach up to 1.5 million persons in Greece, to get vaccinated. –CRI English