Deadly Flu Outbreak in India Kills 2000+

AHMEDABAD, India — Dr. Dinesh Joshi puts on an N95 medical mask and opens the door to the swine-flu ward at Civil Hospital in India’s western state of Gujarat. With 5,000 beds, it is one of the largest hospitals in Asia. The swine-flu ward is at the end of a long corridor, its walls lined with drawings made by schoolchildren on the importance of washing one’s hands after using the toilet, of eating a diet rich in protein and of avoiding public gatherings — all actions that Joshi believes will prevent a worse outbreak of the virus that is currently sweeping the country.

Inside the ward for swine flu ward, labeled by its official medical name, H1N1, 6-year-old Purvi sits on a bed with an IV tube in her nose. Her chances of survival, like those of the 15 or so other patients in the room, are uncertain. In the corner, medical assistants enter details of swine-flu cases into the state and central government database. Across the hall is another room, with the word “Suspect” written on the door in Gujarati, reserved for those who may have the virus.

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Scientists dig for lessons from past pandemics

The Oakland Municipal Auditorium in use as a temporary hospital during the 1918 flu epidemic.

From CNN...
If there's a blessing in the current swine flu epidemic, it's how benign the illness seems to be outside the central disease cluster in Mexico. But history offers a dark warning to anyone ready to write off the 2009 H1N1 virus.

In each of the four major pandemics since 1889, a spring wave of relatively mild illness was followed by a second wave, a few months later, of a much more virulent disease. This was true in 1889, 1957, 1968 and in the catastrophic flu outbreak of 1918, which sickened an estimated third of the world's population and killed, conservatively, 50 million people.

Lone Simonson, an epidemiologist at the National Institutes of Health, who has studied the course of prior pandemics in both the United States and her native Denmark, says, "The good news from past pandemics, in several experiences, is that the majority of deaths have happened not in the first wave, but later." Based on this, Simonson suggests there may be time to develop an effective vaccine before a second, more virulent strain, begins to circulate.

As swine flu -- also known as the 2009 version of the H1N1 flu strain -- spreads, Simonson and other health experts are diving into the history books for clues about how the outbreak might unfold -- and, more importantly, how it might be contained. In fact, the official Pandemic Influenza Operation Plan, or O-Plan, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is based in large part on a history lesson -- research organized by pediatrician and medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan.

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