France, November 05: The World Health Organisation has urged people not to drop their guard over the swine flu pandemic and insisted vaccines were valuable despite the broadly mild symptoms of the virus.
“At the WHO we remain quite concerned about the pattern we are seeing, particularly because a sizeable number of people do develop serious complications and death,” said Keiji Fukuda, special adviser on pandemic.
“Again, we are seeing most of this develop in people who are younger than 65 years, a picture which is different from seasonal influenza.”
Dr Fukuda said the cases of serious complications were largely found among the chronically ill and pregnant women as well as some otherwise healthy younger people.
He said signs of public scepticism about vaccines had been revealed in surveys in several countries despite the resurgence of swine flu in the northern hemisphere with the onset of colder weather.
“WHO believes that these vaccines are very useful against the pandemic virus,” Dr Fukuda said.
Vaccination against A(H1N1) influenza has now started in more than 20 countries and were demonstrably safe, according to the WHO.
“What we are seeing is that these vaccines are highly safe and have been received by a significant number of people without any problems,” Dr Fukuda said.
Swine flu has differed from seasonal flu in persisting in the northern hemisphere during the summer period and in a pattern of occasional serious illness affecting people under 65.
However, Dr Fukuda acknowledged that it was as transmissible as seasonal flu, showed the same pattern of spreading more widely in winter and was “self limiting” in that the large majority of people who caught it got better without the need for special treatment.
More than 5700 people have died worldwide since the pandemic virus was first discovered in April, with most deaths – 4175 – reported in the Americas, according to WHO data.
—Agencies