This can help establish a course of action before a possible pandemic similar In the fall of 1918, Spain suffered the worst flu epidemic in history, also known as the "Spanish flu". The pandemic was caused by an influenza virus type A (H1N1), probably of avian origin and spread throughout the world in a few months. It is considered one of the most lethal epidemics in human history. It is estimated that there were between 50 and 70 million deaths worldwide. Now, a team of researchers at the Hospital Clinic and the University of Barcelona, led by epidemiologist Antoni Trilla, has analyzed the factors that favored the expansion of the "Spanish flu". In his view, this work, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases ", can help establish patterns of action in the event of a pandemic, infectious, as could happen with bird flu.
Official estimates put the mortality due to influenza in Spain (1918-1919) by about 169,000 people. However, using a series of normal rates to calculate the mortality directly and indirectly related to the disease, the authors of this study indicate that it was possible to reach the figure of 260,000 deaths, which represents nearly 1.5% of the population Spanish total in that era. This mortality was concentrated mostly in the period September-November 1918 and assumed that the population of Spain had a net negative growth this year, made only repeated in 1936. The virus responsible for the epidemic, rebuilt in 2005 from samples of dead bodies of native Inuit in Alaska, in reality did not originate in our country. Spain, being a neutral country in World War I, not denounced the publication of reports on the disease and its consequences. Therefore, "it is likely that this was the reason for attribution without solid epidemiological basis, a source 'Spanish' to the epidemic," the researchers contend. They believe that it is possible that the disease was introduced into Spain from trafficking in Spanish and Portuguese workers who were moving en masse into the fields near a French military camp. Mistakes Scientists Barcelona highlight some aspects of interest to understand the reaction of the Spanish and the health authorities of the time, which may have relevance in case of facing a new pandemic. For example, the authorities took more than five months to formally declare the epidemic and the health services were overwhelmed by the high number of cases. Neither the school nor the university started normally; some public activities were suspended but not others, without criterion, which in some cases encouraged the spread of the epidemic, as happened in Zamora and other cities to be held religious mass "for invoke divine mercy. " In Barcelona, for example, had to solicit the help of the army to transport and bury the dead in October 1918. The newspapers of the time, as is the case of La Vanguardia, devoted their front pages to Esquel, and had fixed a section called "The epidemic prevails."
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