I know lots of you are worrying about the current swine flu outbreak. Not much is known yet about the extent of the outbreak, but officials are expressing “regular flu season precautions” in protecting yourself from the swine flu.

This comes from Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He spoke Sunday at a White House briefing, and advised “common-sense precautions“:

• Wash your hands often.
• Stay home if you’re sick.
• Cover your mouth if you cough or sneeze.
• Avoid touching your eyes and nose in case the virus is on your hands.
• Listen to your local health authorities.

Dr. Besser added:

“Very frequent hand-washing is something that we talk about time and time again and that is an effective way to reduce transmission of disease.”

“If you’re sick, it’s very important that people stay at home. If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn’t go to school. And if you’re ill, you shouldn’t get on an airplane or another public transport to travel. Those things are part of personal responsibility in trying to reduce the impact. “

Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director of the CDC’s Science and Public Health Program said, “In areas with no disease yet, a lot of what we can do sounds simple and repetitive but helps.”

Source: CNN

If you want to learn more… Visit the official World Health Organization (WHO) swine flu page.

Tags: Health Tips, Swine Flu

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 10:27 pm by Mark and is filed under Topic-Related News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.