Q: Are pregnant women more likely to catch swine flu?
STREE: A weekly women's magazine on Sify.com
A: Yes. Though pregnant women have always had a higher risk of severe disease from influenza in general, the new H1N1 virus is taking an exceptionally heavy toll. This virus is affecting younger age groups in particular. A recent study of swine flu victims by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for instance, found that they needed hospital care four times more than general population. While pregnant women constituted only 1 per cent of US population their death rate was 6 per cent. So they are definitely over-represented in terms of the proportion of deaths. A similar pattern was seen in the flu pandemics of 1918 and 1957, when death rates for pregnant women were higher than for non-pregnant women.
Text: Sify Correspondent
Images: Getty
