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WHO warns swine flu threatening to become pandemic
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-30 08:03

By March 9, the first symptoms were showing up in the Mexican state of Veracruz, where pig farming is a key industry in mountain hamlets and where small clinics provide the only health care.

The earliest confirmed case was there: a 5-year-old boy who was one of hundreds of people in the town of La Gloria whose flu symptoms left them struggling to breathe.

Days later, a door-to-door tax inspector was hospitalized with acute respiratory problems in the neighboring state of Oaxaca, infecting 16 hospital workers before she became Mexico's first confirmed death.

WHO warns swine flu threatening to become pandemic

Neighbors of the inspector, Maria Adela Gutierrez, said Wednesday that she fell ill after pairing up with a temporary worker from Veracruz who seemed to have a very bad cold. Other people from La Gloria kept going to jobs in Mexico City despite their illnesses, and could have infected people in the capital.

The deaths were already leveling off by the time Mexico announced the epidemic April 23. At hospitals Wednesday, lines of anxious citizens seeking care for flu symptoms dwindled markedly.

The Mexican health secretary, Jose Angel Cordova, said getting proper treatment within 48 hours of falling ill "is fundamental for getting the best results" and said the country's supply of medicine was sufficient.

Cordova has suggested the virus can be beaten if caught quickly and treated properly. But it was neither caught quickly nor treated properly in the early days in Mexico, which lacked the capacity to identify the virus, and whose health care system has become the target of widespread anger and distrust.

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 In case after case, patients have complained of being misdiagnosed, turned away by doctors and denied access to drugs. Monica Gonzalez said her husband, Alejandro, already had a bad cough when he returned to Mexico City from Veracruz two weeks ago and soon developed a fever and swollen tonsils.

As the 32-year-old truck driver's symptoms worsened, she took him to a series of doctors and finally a large hospital. By then, he had a temperature of 102 and could barely stand.

"They sent him away because they said it was just tonsillitis," she said. "That hospital is garbage."

That was April 22, a day before Mexico's health secretary announced the swine flu outbreak. But the medical community was already aware of a disturbing trend in respiratory infections, and Veracruz had been identified as a place of concern.

Gonzalez finally took her husband to Mexico City's main respiratory hospital, "dying in the taxi." Doctors diagnosed pneumonia, but it may have been too late: He has suffered a collapsed lung and is unconscious. Doctors doubt he will survive.

Swine flu has symptoms nearly identical to regular flu -- fever, cough and sore throat -- and spreads like regular flu, through tiny particles in the air, when people cough or sneeze. People with flu symptoms are advised to stay at home, wash their hands and cover their sneezes.

While epidemiologists stress it is humans, not pigs, who are spreading the disease, sales have plunged for pork producers around the world. Egypt began slaughtering its roughly 300,000 pigs on Wednesday, even though no cases have been reported there. WHO says eating pork is safe, but Mexicans have even cut back on their beloved greasy pork tacos.

Pork producers are trying to get people to stop calling the disease swine flu, and Obama notably referred to it Wednesday only by its scientific name, H1N1. U.N. animal health expert Juan Lubroth noted some scientists say "Mexican flu" would be more accurate, a suggestion already inflaming passions in Mexico.

Authorities have sought to keep the crisis in context. In the US alone, health officials say about 36,000 people die every year from flu-related causes.

Mexico's government said it remains too early to ease restrictions that have shut down public life in the overcrowded capital and much of the country. Pyramids, museums and restaurants were closed to keep crowds from spreading contagion.

"None of these measures are popular. We're not looking for that -- we're looking for effectiveness," Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said. "The most important thing to protect is human life."

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