Published 7 May 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1849
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1849

Feature

A/H1N1 influenza: questions and answers

The pandemic alert level has been raised to phase 5—just one level short of a full pandemic—by the World Health Organization. As influenza A/H1N1 spreads quickly from its origins in Mexico, Rebecca Coombes assesses the threat and our levels of protection

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The term pandemic relates to the virus’s geographical spread rather than its severity. A flu pandemic is an ongoing worldwide epidemic caused by a novel influenza virus that infects a large proportion of people lacking immunity to that virus. It is at this point that the World Health Organization raises its alert level to 6. The three flu pandemics of the 20th century were in 1918, 1957, and 1968. The current phase 5 is characterised by "human to human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region"—a strong signal that we are on the brink of an epidemic and that the time to finalise plans is short.

Richard Coker, professor of public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said in a BMJ editorial on 30 April that containment is probably not feasible, given the widespread presence of the virus across many . . . [Full text of this article]

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