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SAO PAULO: Governments worldwide are worried about H1N1 flu, but the worst-hit region by far is Latin America, which accounts for around two-thirds of the 816 confirmed deaths so far from the disease.
The outlook is especially unsettling for the estimated 380 million people grappling with winter in South America, where the A(H1N1) virus is speedily propagating.
And authorities in the poor region have discovered that all initial stocks of a nascent vaccine due out at the end of September have already been snapped up by European countries, the United States and other wealthy nations.
Argentina already has at least 165 deaths, making it the country with the highest H1N1 flu fatality count in the world after the United States, where 302 people have died.
Mexico, where the pandemic first came to light in April, follows, with 138 deaths. Chile has recorded 79 deaths.
Brazil, Latin America's most populous nation with 190 million inhabitants, is concerned that its confirmed fatalities, which rose by six on Tuesday to 56, so far presage a national emergency, especially as it appears infections are now happening without any contact with travellers.
On a per-capita basis, it is Uruguay - squeezed between Argentina and Brazil - that is suffering most. Its small population of 3.5 million has yielded 23 fatalities.
In total, Latin America has more than 570 deaths from H1N1 flu, according to official counts by individual governments.
The worldwide total is 816, according to the World Health Organization on Monday. Its figures often lag behind member countries' tallies by several days.
While the run-of-the-mill, common flu also causes fatalities (36,000 a year in the United States alone), the new A(H1N1) H1N1 flu is causing alarm because of fears it might mutate into a more virulent, deadlier variety.
In the back of many minds is the 1918 Spanish flu, which initially did the rounds without causing many deaths, but later returned as a ferocious bug that killed millions.
One of the biggest worries is that A(H1N1) might combine with elements of A(H5N1) - a recent bird flu type that, while it passed with great difficulty from poultry to humans, proved 60 per cent deadly.
Conscious of the dangers, South American leaders and officials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela banded together last week to demand their countries be exempt from patent restrictions in producing the H1N1 flu vaccine.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva suggested the region's health ministers hold an August 9 meeting in Ecuador to negotiate a strategy with the WHO and drug laboratories.
In the meantime, some precautions have been imposed.
Several Latin American governments or regional authorities have extended school vacations to prevent classroom contamination. Stocks of Tamiflu, one of two drugs shown to act on H1N1 flu infections, have been built up.
In Brazil, penitentiary officials in the south of the country, close to the border with Argentina, are reportedly requesting permission to allow non-dangerous prisoners to go into home detention for two weeks to stop the spread of flu in overcrowded cells.
In Mexico, officials acknowledge the situation is out of control in the poor southeast Chiapas state, which features popular tourist sites, and heavy traffic of Central American immigrants heading to the United States.
- AFP/so
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