Swine Flu

Influenza or as most commonly known, flu affects a lot of people causing sever damage to their health. One of the major types of flu, which hit us was swine flu or the H1N1 virus, causing health problems and even deaths with its infection. Earlier, a similar type of flu, which caused death of thousands of poultry, was the 'avian flu'. Flu is an infection that almost everyone suffers from at least once in their lives and the symptoms of it include sneezing, cough, muscle aches, and nausea. The only medication that helped most people in treating it was Tamiflu.

Swine flu

This H1N1 virus emerged in the year 2009 and created quite a panic and confusion making people desperate to know what it was. The impact of this virus was so lethal that around 18,000 people died globally and a large number of people became severely sick . Certain groups of people are prone to getting infected by this virus and this includes pregnant women, young children, elderly people, and people with pre-existing health conditions. People falling into this category were given vaccinations against swine flu. A person infected with this virus can suffer from symptoms such as very high fever, tiredness, headache, runny nose, sore throat, shortness of breath, cough, loss of appetite, muscle ache, diarrhoea and vomiting.

Tamiflu was extensively used for treating the H1N1 virus, which worked by stopping the replication of influenza cells in the body. This tablet not only stops people from becoming severely sick, but also prevents the spread of the virus on a wider scale. People taking this medication are less likely to infect other people with it.

Now that swine flu pandemic is almost over, people have taken a sigh of relief as it was quite unpredictable in terms of how or when you might get infected with the virus.