Well its been a while since a health scare...

bbc report here.

Well who'd have funk it? WHO (the World Health Organisation) has been caught unawares; while bird flu has had a lot of medical types concerned (with good reason, the damn thing when transmitted to humans has been pretty good at killing us) out of left field comes swine flu.

According the to WHO there have currently been 60 suspected deaths due to this in Mexico City recently. The main reason this has got WHO's boss rushing back to Geneva to co-ordinate activities is that March-April is the end of the flu season and most of the deaths have been among young adults. This leaves the worrying question of what happens if it jumps to the southern hemisphere where the flu season is just starting and infects the vulnerable (ie very young or old).

The second worrying aspect of this is that as well as the 1,000 reported cases in Mexico City there are several in California, okay both are reasonably close together but it shows that it has already left Mexico so you have to wonder where else it has spread to.

Either way looks like bird flu has a challengers for 'most likely next pandemic' award.

This is probably worth following so I'll keep an eye out for it as if its still around in a month or so I'd say (with no basis behind it but as a blind guess) that we may still see it in a year or so - if its gone it'll be just another SARS....