According to the latest World Health Organization reports, the swine flu is no longer the swine flu because no pig in the world has been reported with the H1N1 which has killed 176 people in Mexico and one in the United States. It is clear now that only humans have the former swine flu while pigs don’t therefore the new H1N1 virus has been officially unnamed. The H1n1 illness comes with variations of swine, avian, and human elements, and now farmers in the US fear that their pigs will contact the flu.
“That is the biggest concern, that your herd could somehow contract this illness from an infected person. If a person is sick, we don’t want you coming anywhere on the farm,” Ron Suther, a Kansas hog farmer.
He says that he is doing everything possible in order to ensure that his pigs will not be infected by a human therefore he has limited the amount of persons who can visit the farm. Also, farmers all over the US are keeping their pigs in barns. US pork producers have been affected by the swine flu as they pay a lot to take care of the pigs while the pork meat prices have dropped dramatically.
“There is no evidence of this new strain being in our pig populations in the United States. And our concern very much is we don’t want a sick human to come into our barns and transmit this new virus to our pigs. If humans give it to pigs, we don’t have things like Tamiflu for pigs. We don’t have antivirals. We have no treatment other than to give them aspirin,” said Jennifer Greiner, chief veterinarian at the National Pork Producers.
Meanwhile, WHO is trying to determine the origin of the H1N1 pandemic, while Egypt officials have given precise orders that all pigs in the country have to be killed. I guess they didn’t hear that humans are the problem, while the pigs are endangered of getting infected.
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