Tariq Nelson

The WHO says that we are near a pandemic Wash your hands! Stay home if you are sick!

The World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that a global flu pandemic was imminent, raising its threat level as the swine flu virus spread and killed the first person outside of Mexico, a toddler in Texas.

“Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world,” WHO Director General Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva.

“The biggest question is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start,” Chan said, but added the world “is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history.”

Nearly a week after the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, first emerged in California and Texas and was found to have caused deaths in Mexico, Spain reported the first case in Europe of swine flu in a person who had not been to Mexico, illustrating the danger of person-to-person transmission.

Chan raised the WHO alert level to Phase 5, its second highest warning that a pandemic, or global outbreak of a serious new illness, is imminent.

The new alert a signal to governments and businesses to take action, and to pharmaceutical companies to ramp up antiviral drug production and capacity, she said.

Almost all cases outside of Mexico have had only light symptoms, and only a handful of cases have needed hospitalization.

But in Mexico, where up to 159 people have died from the virus and around 1,300 more are being tested for infection, people struggled with an emergency that has brought normal life virtually to a standstill over the past week.

“I’m depressed. I don’t understand where this came from, how it spreads, how long it will last or what it will to the economy,” an elderly woman named Licha said, sitting on a Mexico City park bench and wearing a surgical mask.

Filed under: Children's Issues