Little boy could hold key to Mexico swine flu outbreak

A four year-old boy, the first known person to catch of swine flu, actually caught it fortnight earlier than first thought, it emerged last night. The Mexican Government said it initially thought that the victim, Edgar Hernandez, was suffering from ordinary flu but laboratory testing has since shown that he had contracted swine flu.

Edgar, who comes from a town where residents have long complained about the smell and flies from a nearby pig farm went on to make a full recovery. But at least 152, other people in Mexico, according to BBC figures, have died of the disease with another 1,614 suspected sufferers under observation. Edgar’s story is expected to create controversy in Mexico because he lived in Veracruz state, home to thousands of farmers who claim that their land was stolen from them by the Mexican Government in 1992. The farmers, who call themselves Los 400 Pueblos – The 400 Towns – are famous for their naked marches through the streets of Mexico City. The boy’s hometown, La Gloria, is also close to a pig farm that raises almost 1 million animals a year. The Australian online newspaper, reports that the farm, Granjas Carroll de Mexico, is partly owned by Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based US company and the world’s largest producer and processor of pork products. People living in La Gloria have long complained about the clouds of flies that are drawn the so-called “manure lagoons” created by such mega-farms, known in the agriculture business as Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).

It is now known that there was a widespread outbreak of a powerful respiratory disease in the La Gloria area earlier this month, with some residents falling ill as long ago as February. Health workers soon intervened, sealing off the town and spraying chemicals to kill the flies that were reportedly swarming through people’s homes. A spokeswoman for Smithfield, Keira Ullrich, said that the company had found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico. Meanwhile, Mexico’s National Organisation of Pig Production and Producers released its own statement, saying: “We deny completely that the influenza virus affecting Mexico originated in pigs because it has been scientifically demonstrated that this is not possible.”

Many Mexicans fear the economic devastation caused by the health emergency as much as they are the prospect of swine flu. Adding to the misery, several countries including China have banned imports of live pigs and pork products from Mexico (and parts of the US) in spite of claims by farming trade groups that it is impossible to catch the virus from cooked meat.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children