While "The West" laughs in the face of H1N1, the WHO raises the Pandemic Alert to 5.

The NEW flu may seem like a walk in the park to First World nations, but, it is still very serious business for most nations globally. There are many questions regarding the virus including why does Mexico have such a high, atypical (effecting 20, 30 and 40 year olds over the usual pattern of the elderly and young) and wide spread infection rate and what is being done to alleviate the poverty of these nations that allow such conditions to propagate not just poor quality of life, but, dangerous infectious disease?

There have been cases reported in countries in Latin America that border on Mexico through casual tourist contact. These episodes are turning into huge concerns for these governments for many reasons.

To begin, the countries are rather impoverished and while The West seems to think too much is being made of these circumstances by the WHO and otherwise, there are serious consequences to countries with less than helpful health care and a populous poorly educated to hygiene with no waste disposal methods.

9 SUSPECTED CASES OF SWINE FLU INFECTIONS REPORTED IN BELIZE (click here)
April 30, 2009
On Tuesday the World Health Organization raised the alert on Swine Flu to stage 5, a tier below declaring the outbreak a pandemic. Following the postponement of several social activities across the country that were planned for the Labor Day weekend health officials today held another in a series of press conferences to update the media and the public on the latest status of the Swine Influenza threat to Belize. During the briefing there was clarification about information that has been given by the media.
Doctor Paul Edwards; Director, Central Health Region
“We need to be careful how we say this; they are cases, they are under investigation. We need to be extremely careful when we say that. We would like the media to understand that we have the heightened surveillance and when we find that something is fitting the bill we will take off a sample and send it to CARIC. The important development from yesterday is the fact that we have found four cases of interest. One in San Pedro, one in Orange Walk and two in Belize City.”
Dr. Edwards also spoke on events that are considered mass gatherings....

The Latin American and South American countries have a difficult job in monitoring and controlling the spread of such a virus. If one recalls there was a familiar virus called HIV that originated in monkeys. Viruses are very dangerous, there was a time when such disease killed people in the USA and otherwise unchecked by modern technology and vaccines. The WHO understands the dynamics of what can be a very dangerous scenario that can still find its way into not only a pandemic, but, also an epidemic with deaths recorded rather than just infections.

If, in the tropics, monkeys contract the virus it could annihilate species of monkeys, but, it can also impact on humans in a new strain of virus more virulent than the previous.

There is a link to a WIKI illustration that explains 'antigenic shift' (click here) and why any virus without vaccines available are dangerous. Polio didn't come under control because organization like the WHO considered it an insignificant infection.

The WHO does incredible work. If they say there is still concern then there is still concern.