World H1N1 flu outbreak

Too many swine flu cases to count, WHO says

Article published on the 2009-07-17 Latest update 2009-07-17 11:44 TU

An Argentine worker wears a mask as a protective measure against the swine flu during a protest in Buenos Aires this week.
(Photo: Reuters)

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stopped counting individual cases of swine flu, saying the pandemic is moving around the globe at an unprecedented speed. Instead, it will keep track of the global situation by monitoring newly affected countries.

The policy shift was motivated by mild symptoms in the majority of patients, who the health watchdog says usually recover "even without medical treatment, within a week of the onset of symptoms".

Past pandemics had needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus, which took hold in just six weeks. The WHO called on all countries to closely monitor unusual events, such as possible clusters of severe or fatal infections.

Sudan on Thursday reported its first case of swine flu, with health officials confirming that two people were being treated in hospital after returning to Khartoum from the United Kingdom.

On its website, the WHO says it had asked newly affected countries to report the first confirmed cases and "provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases".

Brazil Thursday became the eighth country classified as having a sustainable transmission of the flu after trippling the number of deaths to 11. Concerns were raised during talks in Buenos Aires that vaccines expected to be available in south America were being reserved for wealthier nations including the United States, Australia and Europe.

Health ministers from six south American countries, including Argentina - the second-worst affected nation in the world - warned against a second wave of infections. South Amercia is in the middle of winter and is experiencing high infection rates and fatalities.