TWICE as many children will die of swine flu in the next 12 months compared to the number of deaths from regular influenza, a leading disease expert said.
But the good news is that Professor Robert Booy said the number of deaths would still be fairly small – around 10 or 12 in a year. In the early days of the swine flu scare it was feared a pandemic could be much more deadly.
Three to six children die every year from regular influenza, he said.
“It (death from swine flu) can occur in a healthy child although most of them we believe will occur in a child with a problem, say a chronic heart problem, long-standing lung, kidney, liver (problems) or diabetes,” Professor Booy told ABC radio.
“The likelihood is with this virus we’ll see more of the small number of severe (cases) than we do normally.”
Yesterday a three-year-old Victorian boy with swine flu died. The family requested the boy’s medical history not be released.
Prof Booy is the co-director of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance of Vaccine Preventable Diseases at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney.
“In the most part it’s mild but it’s a double-truth,” Prof Booy said of swine flu.
“You’re always going to get a small number of very serious cases as we’ve seen with adult deaths and we expect to have some children dying too.”
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