OTTAWA — Here’s a social invitation you should decline.
Canadian medical officials are warning against attending “swine flu” parties at which people expose themselves or their children to the H1N1 virus in hopes that mild sickness now will make them immune if the illness turns more deadly in the fall.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, head of the Public Health Agency of Canada, called such potential get-togethers “a very dangerous practice.”
Rumours have circulated on social networking sites of parents considering holding the modern-day equivalent of “chicken pox parties” — which were thought to be a means of protecting children from more severe illness is the pre-vaccine era.
Speaking from Mexico, where global health experts are meeting to trade information about H1N1, Butler-Jones said it’s true the vast majority of swine flu cases in Canada have been mild.
But “you cannot predict which child will get seriously ill and die. Who wants to have that party and that as a consequence?” he warned. “Trying to get infected at this time is potentially very dangerous.”
Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, also attending the experts’ meeting in Cancun, said there “is still a lot of uncertainty about what we will be facing in the fall,” which is the traditional flu season.
H1N1 swine flu has now taken hold in more than 100 countries. Britain’s health minister Thursday projected the country could see 100,000 cases by the end of the summer.
Although a vaccine is not expected to be ready before the fall, the U.S. said it has offered hundreds of thousands of the retroviral treatment Tamiflu to the Pan American Health Organization for use in Latin America.
Butler-Jones said Canada is “in a good position” to treat its own population with the stockpiles it has. Aglukkaq would not say whether the government would assist poorer nations with shipments of Tamiflu or a vaccine once it is developed.
“We haven’t received an official request from them yet,” she said.
But “any request will be considered,” Butler-Jones added.
christina.spencer@sunmedia.ca
