'Unstoppable' swine flu hits younger people
Updated
It's more than months since swine flu first surfaced as a serious problem in Mexico - mostly affecting weak people or those without good access to medical treatments - but experts are saying that otherwise healthy people are now also at risk. The World Health Organisation has described the Swine Flu pandemic as 'unstoppable'. An estimated 90,000 people have been officially diagnosed worldwide and there have bee at least 430 deaths.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Dr Alan Hampson, chairman, Australia's Influenza Specialist Group and consultant to the World Health Organisation
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HAMPSON: We're certainly seeing cases amongst normal, healthy people and that is actually the history of pandemic influenza. When we have pandemics, we do see a shift in the age and the severity of infections and infections that occur in people who don't have underlying risk conditions can become much more severe. So we do see an increase in hospitalisation and unfortunately, in mortality in those younger age groups and that happened three times last century, when we had pandemics and it appears that it's happening again now.
LAM: So is it my imagination or has the mood changed, because even when we had the outbreak here in Victoria, in schools, the symptoms certainly seemed quite mild and nobody seemed very perturbed or worried about it?
HAMPSON: Look, I think in children, the infection does tend to be mild and that's fairly typical and was fairly typical in past pandemics. The big shift impact has tended to be generally people from later teen age into early adulthood in the past. I don't have complete details of those people who are seriously affected at the moment and their ages, but in the past, we certainly have seen this shifting to that 15 to 40 year old age group as being severely affected. And that occurred in a really large way in 1918, and that's where a lot of the mortality occurred in 1918. And people have been concerned that this particular virus might in fact change and become more like the 1918 virus. Now there is no indication that it is going to become anywhere near as severe as the 1918 virus, but there's always that little bit of a tendency for the virus to have that sort of impact.
LAM: Indeed, and a US study also warn that Swine flu might pick up other flu strains and therefore make it resistant to flu vaccines. Do you think the bottom line here is that, there are still many unknown quantities about this virus?
HAMPSON: Oh certainly, and there are always many unknown quantities about influenza viruses. They are very tricky viruses to work with and to understand. But we do know a lot about the mutation of the virus and its ability to mix with other influenza viruses and acquire genetic characteristics from them. Now what we're seeing at the moment is a virus which will probably be mutating as it goes.
In the early stages, the virus that was analysed from Mexico and from the USA, appeared, although it was spreading fairly readily amongst people and causing disease, it didn't appear to be fully adapted to humans. But there are a couple of little genetic changes that can occur with single mutations which could make it spread much more readily, may be we're starting to see some of that happening now. But the fact that we're now seeing these more severe cases may be a reflection of a couple of things. It may be a change in the age group that are being affected, there may be some mutational changes in the virus that are making it more virulent, or it may be just that these are rare cases, but we're seeing them now because there is much more widespread infections.
LAM: Well Australia, as it is is already putting in motion a plan to come up with 21 million vaccines, million doses. Australia, of course, is a rich country with resources for mass vaccination. Is this pandemic a huge danger for the poorer countries in the region, in Asia, for instance?
HAMPSON: Look, pandemics are always an issue for poorer countries in Asia and other parts of the world where they don't have regular supplies of influenza vaccine and don't use influenza vaccine on a regular basis. And that has been a very serious issue for the WHO and have been trying to deal with that. They have had some promises in the past that during a pandemic some vaccine will be supplied by some of the world's major vaccine manufacturers for use in those countries in the event of outbreaks. But we do know that the world's capacity to produce influenza vaccine is far short of the potential demand during a pandemic. And that is a very real issue at the public health level and it's been an issue for many people in the scientific community and to decide what we can do with that. Now, recently, over the last couple of years, vaccine manufacturers have taken this on board and they have been working hard to increase their capacity to produce vaccine, but unfortunately it hasn't reached the stage where vaccine will flow very readily right at the moment.
