There are fears of a swine flu outbreak in Ghana after the students of the Kumasi Academy who have been falling ill and in some cases been dying over the past few days were diagnosed with swine flu.
Tests carried out at the Noguchi Research Institute found out that the students are infected with Type A Influenza, more commonly known as swine flu.
The strain of infection is the H1N1, which caused a massive pandemic in 2009.
It’s currently unknown how the students contracted the virus, but it is known to rapidly spread amongst infected populations, which explain the massive number of students who were infected.
Currently 44 students are receiving treatment whilst close to a dozen have died.
Some parents initially withdrew their wards from the school during the chaos, but later brought them back for inoculation.
This raises questions of how far the virus could travel in the general population, if any parent or another family has contracted it from a student.
“Swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, is a relatively new strain of an influenza virus that causes symptoms similar to the regular flu. It originated in pigs but is spread primarily from person to person.”, according to healthline.
“Swine flu made headlines in 2009 when it was first discovered in humans and became a pandemic. Pandemics are contagious diseases affecting people throughout the world or on multiple continents at the same time.”