Influenza is a highly contagious respiratory illness. The course of the disease is mostly mild with chills, fever & fatigue being the predominant symptoms. The infection can sometime be serious especially in young children, older persons, pregnant women and people with pre-existing diseases such as asthma, diabetes or heart disease.
The most common complication of flu is bacterial pneumonia.
The viruses mutate rapidly and there are many different strains, mainly influenza A and influenza B. The disease causes 300 – 600 000 deaths annually.
Be smart and get your flu vaccine!
You may not be at risk directly but someone close to you may be.
Complications of flu
- Pulmonary
- Pneumonia (primary influenza, secondary bacterial, and mixed) & bronchitis
- Exacerbation of
- Asthma
- COPD
- other underlying lung disease
- Non-pulmonary
- Cardiac complications (myocarditis)
- Encephalopathy
- Liver and central nervous system (Reye’s Syndrome)
- Peripheral nervous system (Guillain-Barré syndrome)
History of flu
- “The mother of all pandemics”
- The A/H1N1 influenza pandemic: 1918 to 1919
- first wave early 1918 -> mild illness,
- second wave later that year was more deadly.
- Infected 500 million people (1/3 OF GLOBAL POPULATION AT THE TIME)
- Killed 50 million.life expectancy rates globally dropped by several years, more than over the course of the entire First World War.
Is it flu or is it a cold?
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