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SWINE FLU Jennifer Lee Gary HCS/457 March 7, 2012 Reginald Bernard

“SWINE FLU”
Influenza, or “flu”, as it is more commonly known, is a ubiquitous in the disease profile of any developed or developing country. Many thousands of people fall victim to seasonal flu each year, recovering just as quickly. Only the very debilitated or immunosuppressed have life-threatening squealed. Flu also shows a “cyclic” trend where “epidemics” of flu occur every 6-7 years. In these years greater than an average expected number of people fall ill due to flu but these epidemics last only about a year or two Recently, (or as research shows not so recently), a new strain of influenza has come to light called “swine” flu. Also called pig or hog flu, this strain of influenza causes respiratory disease in pigs, hogs and other swine. The symptoms manifested are barking cough, poor appetite, lethargy and malaise. Alarmingly, this strain of influenza is readily transmissible to humans and causes much the same symptoms in humans as it does in pigs.

Origin of the H1N1 Strain
The origins of swine flu are unclear. Many researchers say that the outbreak was first localized in March of 2009 in a village in Mexico, when health authorities identified a spate of deaths of young and apparently healthy adults. Mexico’s first confirmed case was of a boy named Edgar, 5, who soon recovered (“Swine Flu”, 2010). The genesis of swine flu has still eluded researchers. Most hold with the theory that this strain emerged in pig breeding farms in Asia, and was carried to the North Americas in a human, however this

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