H1N1 Global Status as on 17^th November’2009

Swine flue, after first detection in Mexico City 18^th March 2009 has since spread over the globe including all the states of USA. According to World Health Organization (WHO) report of 13^th November this year, the world figure of laboratory confirmed cases of H1N1 were more than 503,000 resulting in 6260 deaths in 206 countries. However the majority of cases were from USA and Brazil. As per WHO regional office for Americas (AMRO), the clinically confirmed cases of H1N1 infection for whole of America was 190,765 with a death toll of 4512. The number count of sickened cases actually is much more than the above all-world figure suggests, as many of the countries as well as WHO has stopped counting individual sickness cases as the numbers went on rising quickly and instead started tracking major outbreaks. WHO has declared the swine flue outbreak a pandemic on June 11 this year.

The global status of confirmed deaths in the H1N1 pandemic, as per report of European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) as on 17^th November is given below in short.

1. European Union and EFTA……………………………………………. 515

2. Other European countries and Central Asia………………………… 63

3. Mediterranean and Middle East ……………………………………… 368

4 .Africa…………………………………………………………………….. 108

5. North America………………………………………………………….. 1766

6. Central America and Caribbean……………………………………… 170

7. South America…………………………………………………………. 2760

8. Asia……………………………………………………………………… 1128

9. Australia and Pacific countries……………………………………….. 214

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7092

The WHO is pro-actively monitoring the progress of the pandemic with the input from its regional offices, member countries and other multiple source data.

Effect of Spread of Swine Flue Pandemic on Economy

The pandemic has hit the world at a time when the world economy is just staging a turnaround. The productivity of a nation depends on its healthy population. If large number of people report sick because of swine flue, then productivity is bound to drop. This directly hits at the core of the economy. The other most suffering sector is tourism. Because of swine flue scare, tourists are cutting down their itinerary or altogether dropping it to keep indoors. Countries having lesser or no instances of swine flue imposes travel ban on foreigners. Even export of meat is banned by some countries in the fear of contaminated meat etc. The stock prices of tourist industries including aviation may slide. The present pandemic flue too has done its share of economic damage to the US and world at large.