South Africa: State Orders 1,3-Million Swine Flu Jabs

I found this web page through AllAfrica.com. It is a very recent news article dealing with the (H1N1) Swine Flu crisis. It was written on January 27th, 2009 by Tamar Kahn. The Swine Flu crisis has probably affected everyone in the world. I was even affected in my little hometown of just over 1,000 people in Iowa. We might not hear about this epidemic much anymore but it is still a big problem in some places, such as Africa. Knowing how much it affected the U.S. and North America, just imagine how badly Africa is being hurt.

The Department of Health ordered 1,3-million doses of swine flu vaccine. They plan to start vaccinating in mid-March. The Swine Flu vaccination was put together to also fight against different strains of H1N1 and Influenza B. The department reserved many shots for health-care workers, HIV positive children under 15 years old, pregnant women, and people with chronic lung and heart problems. The vaccine provides protection against the flu within 10 to 14 days. To this day, there have been 12,636 cases of swine flu confirmed in South Africa. Along with 93 deaths. Of those 93 deaths, half tested positive for HIV and 28% were pregnant. The first batch of 200,000 doses of vaccine is expected to arrive in Africa next month, from Australia.

This article caught my attention because I hadn't heard any news about Swine Flu lately. I got vaccinated myself at my high school. Every student had the opportunity to get the shot that day. It didn't go in order of health-care workers, if we had certain conditions, ect. My school only has about 300 students but even we were affected. I thought it was interesting that of the 93 people who died, half tested positive to HIV. These statistics are saddening, but true. The key in my mind would have to be prevention. Many disease hit Africa hard such as malaria, AIDS, HIV, and many others. This is another sickness and hopefully Africa can become protected with this vaccine before the problem gets out of hand.