One can't help but get the impression that the Ministry of Health was hoping the diarrhoea mystery would just fade quietly. But like that bit of floatie, it just doesn't want to go away. So here we are 6 weeks into a national diarrhoea epidemic. And strangely the MOH remains eerily silent.
Methinks this is not a food borne disease. Because if it were, the clusters would have been obvious by now, and the AVA would be running all over the place making a great show of catching rats. But everything's quiet at the moment. So to my reckoning this must a diarrhoeal disease caused by some other pathogen....an airborne virus perhaps?
Once we start thinking along those lines, one of the likely candidates, especially of recent importance, is the H1N1 virus. The novel H1N1 virus has been reported to be capable, more so than seasonal flu, of causing diarrhoea, and I can't help wondering if perhaps this 'epidemic' of diarrhoea is somehow related to the H1N1 virus. Perhaps it has somehow attentuated to just produce gastrointestinal symptoms.
Just some speculations, but I think, may be worth considering. I wonder if anyone has bothered to assay the virus in these doarrhoea cases.
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Six Years
13 years ago
2 comments:
Nothing so conspiratorial i am afraid !
Just another small outbreak of GE due to the normal GE viruses, take your pick.
By the way, it seems to have sharply tapered off already.
MOH has far bigger issues to worry about, one of which is the rolling out of the H1N1 vaccine
nah..... I wasn't suggesting anything conspiratorial. Just that the GE cases are pretty significant. I thought it was tapering off but last weeks stats showed that it bounced back up again. Perhaps this weeks stats will show it dropping back down again.
In any case it has remained above epidemic threshold for weeks. Surely it must indicate something.
Yeah, I know the H1N1 vaccine is coming online, but the vaccines and the diarrhoea folks are in different departments, no? It would be nice if MOH could make some reassuring noises about the 'epidemic'tough.
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