Healthy Fitness Ideas

As of April 26th, health offi­cials in the United States declared a pub­lic health emer­gency over the new strain of swine flu, des­ig­nated A(H1N1).  The emer­gency dec­la­ra­tion releases more fed­eral dol­lars for anti-viral drugs.  One-quarter of the U.S. government’s stock­pile of 50 mil­lion courses of anti-flu drugs will be made avail­able for pub­lic health use. So far there have been 20 con­firmed cases of includ­ing 8 in New York, 7 in Cal­i­for­nia, 2 in Kansas, 2 in Texas and 1 in Ohio.  More A(H1N1) flu cases are expected to be reported, but vir­tu­ally all cases in this coun­try been mild and non-fatal. At the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tury, it was well-understood that many con­ta­gious dis­eases were caused by microbes.  How­ever, unlike today, there was no anti-viral treat­ment avail­able for any of the virally-caused dis­eases, with the excep­tion of syphilis and malaria. The 1918 – 20 flu pan­demic, some­times referred to as the “Span­ish flu” was an influenza pan­demic that spread to nearly every part of the world.  It was caused by an unusu­ally vir­u­lent and deadly Influenza, a virus strain of sub­type H1N1.  The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol esti­mates that the 1918 – 20 Span­ish flu virus infected at least 500 mil­lion of the world’s 1.5 bil­lion pop­u­la­tion at the time, and that approx­i­mately 20 to 100 mil­lion peo­ple were killed world­wide. Most of its vic­tims in the 1918 – 20 pan­demic were healthy young adults.  Other influenza out­breaks usu­ally struck the very young, the elderly, or those with com­pro­mised immune sys­tems.  The high fatal­ity was a com­bi­na­tion of the high infec­tion rate (up to 50%) and the extreme sever­ity of the symp­toms, sus­pected to be caused by cytokine storms, an over-reaction of the immune sys­tem.  It is the­o­rized that younger peo­ple, with stronger immune sys­tems, reacted more extremely to the virus.   Bur many of those who died in the 1918 – 20 pan­demic could have been saved if today’s anti-flu drugs, antibi­otics and mechan­i­cal ven­ti­la­tors had been avail­able at the time. Even though there is cur­rently no vac­cine for humans for the new A(H1N1) flu strain, it is cur­able.  The flu virus is sus­cep­ti­ble to the he antivi­ral drugs Tam­i­flu and Relenza. The C.D.C. rec­om­mends the fol­low­ing pre­cau­tions: wash­ing your hands fre­quently; avoid­ing touch­ing the face; cov­er­ing your nose and mouth when sneez­ing; and stay­ing home when bat­tling the flu.  Although the new strain is called swine flu A(H1N1), the virus is spread by con­tact with peo­ple infected with the virus, not by con­sum­ing pork. ©2009 — All Rights Reserved | Pub­lished by: www.ebargains-unlimited.com