SARS, Bird flu, AIDS, Black death……and now the H1N1 virus or the ‘swine flu’, which is the latest disease to be termed a pandemic. A pandemic according to Encarta dictionary is “having widespread effect: existing in the form of a widespread epidemic that affects people in many different countries”. An epidemic is basically a sudden spread of a new disease which influences people by spreading among them, and when such an epidemic spread to at least 2 different global zones, it is declared a pandemic. For e.g. AIDS is a pandemic.

Hence, we see that issuing a pandemic tag for a disease does not mean that the virus or the disease has become more deadly, it just means that the virus has spread from one location of the world to the other. It is a signal for all the countries to start preparing to fight it. The severity level of the current H1N1 virus has been judged moderate, based on the number of severe symptoms and the number of deaths due to the disease. The national levels symptoms till now are same as those of normal seasonal influenza flu.

In the past, sanitary conditions around the World were low and people didn’t have much knowledge about medicine and diseases. Hence in case of a pandemic, nothing much could be done to control it. Nowadays, medicine has advanced to many great heights and the activity of the virus is being watched closely all over the world. Medicines to tackle the swine flu, at an early stage have been produced and are available in government hospitals. Research is going on to find out a complete cure of this disease. Patients are being held forcibly in hospitals and are being treated accordingly. Extreme cautions are being taken at the airports by monitoring people travelling from flu affected countries.

Another important aspect of a pandemic is that it tend to come in waves, they come, finish off and then reappear after some time. Will this happen with current virus is yet to be determined.