Visiting students brought swine flu to Kenya

Travellers from Britain, including medical and public health students, brought the new pandemic swine flu to Kenya in the space of a few weeks, researchers reported.

Researchers testing out Kenya’s new influenza surveillance system said the arrival of the new H1N1 virus let them watch in real time how a virus spreads.

On average, one person infected 26 per cent of close household-type contacts, they found — with one infecting a third of his companions. Ironically, a team of medical students started it, they reported in the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report on death and disease.

"On June 21, a group of 34 medical students from Nottingham, United Kingdom, flew from London to Nairobi," the team at the Kenya Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation wrote.

Nine-hour flight

"During the nine-hour flight, a male student aged 22 years developed headache and chills. The next day, the group took a five-hour bus trip to Kisumu town where an educational service program had been arranged."

Within days, 70 per cent of the students and leaders in the group had flu-like symptoms. Half of them were confirmed to have the H1N1 swine flu virus. On June 26, a group of four public health students from London flew to Nairobi and then travelled to Kisumu to work on malaria-related projects," the researchers added. A 22-year-old woman became ill and infected a number of the students.

The researchers think groups like travelling students may be more likely to infect one another than families.

Two individual travellers also brought H1N1 from Britain — a five-year-old boy, who infected one other family member, and a 21-year-old student who infected one of four family members. Knowing infection rates can help officials project how far and fast a new virus such as H1N1 will spread. As every case is not tested, the information can help them extrapolate the true number of infections.

—Reuters

 

 

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