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The H1N1 flu virus (red) bears a disturbing resemblance to the virus strain that caused the 1918 flu pandemic - Source: Reuters -
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An infectious diseases expert is slamming fellow medicos who downplay the swine flu, saying they threaten to scuttle the world's first opportunity to control a pandemic virus.
Sceptical medical experts should share some blame for the sluggish public take-up of the now widely available swine flu vaccine, says University of Sydney Professor Robert Booy.
"Questioning of the value of H1N1 2009 vaccines by experts from different fields has undoubtedly been done in good faith," says Booy, who is also a paediatrician at the Children's Hospital at Westmead.
"But (it) may well also have sounded the death knell for what would otherwise have been - for the first time in history - the eminently achievable control of a pandemic virus."
Booy says a widespread take-up of the swine flu vaccine in Australia and across the globe would ensure "dramatic reductions in transmission, disease and deaths" from the virus.
Yet, he says, reports indicated that only 10-20 per cent of the Australian population had received a swine flu vaccine.
The rapid and widespread transmission of the virus ensured about another 20 per cent of people would be immune to it because of previous exposure.
Booy said this did not amount to "enough population-wide protection to prevent the next wave, particularly in high-risk settings like schools and kindergartens".
And while the virus had proven to be "innocuous" for the majority who became infected it would continue to pose "severe" health risks for some.
"A small percentage of a very large number of infected people can still lead to a sizeable and important number of seriously infected people," Booy said.
"... as demonstrated by intensive care units full to capacity across developed countries beginning, for example, in Australia from June 2009."
Booy says those swine flu cases which required intensive care admissions were almost entirely people aged under 60, and about third had no underlying medical risk factors.
There was emerging evidence that older people had boosted natural defences against the swine flu, Booy says, because of exposure in their youth to a virus similar to the 1918 pandemic flu.
This explained why the virus was now perceived as less serious than expected, he says, as elderly people who were usually most at risk during a pandemic flu outbreak had some "cross-protective immunity".
The swine flu would continue to pose a heightened threat to younger Australians, Booy says, cautioning it was expected to return to wide circulation well before the winter.
"Europe, USA and Asia have already had a second wave and ours is coming, perhaps as soon as February," he says.
"... I, as a doctor, am vaccinated against H1N1 2009 so that I am protected and do not pass on the infection to vulnerable patients.
"The vaccine is safe and effective. My nearest and dearest have been vaccinated too. Why not you?"
Booy, a vaccine researcher for more than 20 years, has focused on on influenza in the past decade. He wrote his comments in a Science Blog distributed by the Australian Science Media Centre.
