Peter Gallagher

As of 29 April, the WHO ‘swine influenza’ update site shows a total of seven deaths from the Mex­i­can out­break, all in Mex­ico. It’s tech­ni­cally a ‘pan­demic’ because con­firmed cases (no deaths) have now been reported in six coun­tries other than Mex­ico. All except the USA (46) are in the single-digits.

On aver­age flu kills 41,000 peo­ple in the USA every year… and in Aus­tralia? Accord­ing to Australia’s Health 2008, there were 3034 deaths from ‘pneu­mo­nia and influenza’ in 2005—about 2.3% of all deaths—making the two res­pi­ra­tory dis­eases the tenth lead­ing cause of death for women and the twelfth for men. The mor­tal­ity rates seem to be sim­i­lar in recent years although there was a strong up-turn in influenza cases noti­fied by Aus­tralian doc­tors in 2007 (more than 10,000 cases for the first time).

Unfor­tu­nately the mor­tal­ity data pub­licly avail­able does not dis­tin­guish between pneu­mo­nia and influenza: two dis­eases with very dif­fer­ent eti­ol­ogy. Pneumonia—the ‘old man’s friend’—preys endem­i­cally on the weak­ened immune sys­tems of the sick and elderly. It can be caused by infec­tions from bac­te­ria or par­a­sites as well as by viruses and is fre­quently the most seri­ous com­pli­ca­tion of influenza.

Accord­ing to Australia’s Health Avian influenza (bird flu) cur­rently remains rare world­wide. In 2007, there were 77 human cases world­wide, two-thirds of whom died. This takes the total num­ber of suf­fer­ers between the end of 2003 to the end of 2007 to 340, of whom 61% died. There have been no human cases in Australia.