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Thursday 23 May 2013

History of H1N1 (swine flu) Virus



History of H1N1 (swine flu)  Virus

 

Swine influenza is not a new disease. It was first diagnosed in the year 1918. It was not clear then that whether human contracted the virus from pigs or pigs contracted it from humans. Somewhere between 20-40 million people died from “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe” which were the two names for it. To this day it is still unclear whether the strain was swine influenza or not.
             In the year 1976 on Feb’06′, 4 comrades were hospitalized and their fellow army recruit died. The cause of his death came out to be a new strain of influenza with was a variant of H1N1 and was known as A/New Jersey/1976 as told by the health officials 2 weeks later. In between a new strain was discovered which A/Victoria/75 (H3N2) was. President Gerald Ford made every person gets vaccinated against the disease to prevent people from another epidemic. This all came to a a halt by Gullain-Barre Syndrome which was a side effect result from a modern influenza vaccine. Initially 25 people had died of the vaccine, which lead to the death of more people and which over a period of time spread over to a large population base.
          Again later in the year 1998, this virus was found in pigs across four US States and within a year it had spread through pig populations across the US.
Now, the current outbreak of the virus is in year 2009. This outbreak is due to a new strain of subtype H1N1 which was not previously reported in pigs. It appears as if this outbreak was transmitted from humans to pigs and then back to us as the same as the 1918 pandemic.

 

 

 

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