The Taming of the Flu? Influenza and Oseltamivir Phosphate

摘要

Each year new strains of the influenza virus evolve andspread globally, typically infecting around 20% of theworld population and killing several hundreds of thou-sands of people. Most affected are the very young, theelderly and those with chronic medical conditions. Oc-casionally an influenza strain will arise that is so virulent,the death toll climbs into the millions. Examples of suchpandemics include the Spanish Flu (1918-1920), which isestimated to have killed between 20 to 100 million people,the Asian Flu (1958-1959) with a death toll of around 1million, and the Hong Kong Flu (1968-1969) which killedaround 3/4 of a million people