Health & Fitness - H1N1 surveillance of travelers tracked

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H1N1 surveillance of travelers tracked

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (UPI) -- An effective way to boost H1N1 flu control options is through surveillance of travelers, a U.S. researcher says.

Dr. David Freedman of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and co-director of GeoSentinel -- a global online network of 48 travel and tropical medicine clinics on several continents -- says GeoSentinel is showing where travelers and mobile populations are getting the flu.

GeoSentinel tracks which countries and places have intense enough transmission that they are exporting flu and potentially seeding other countries with the virus.

"Being able to track disease outbreaks in real time enables you to know, in real-time, what works and what doesn't work in terms of treatment," Freedman said in a statement.

Tracking and understanding the patterns of H1N1 influenza spread remains crucial as more dots show up on the GeoSentinel map, Freedman says.

"Although the H1N1 virus is fairly mild compared to a lot of other novel flu viruses, it is very contagious," Freedman says. "With the speed of modern travel, and the fact that our countries draw visitors from a lot of different nationalities, the ingredients for a pandemic were there. Americans were top of the list for exporting this disease."

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

This news arrived on: 10/16/2009

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