Swine flu could threaten millions with other diseases

By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA (Reuters) - The swine flu outbreak, which has killed up to 160 people, could be especially dangerous for millions of people already battling other infections, such as HIV or tuberculosis, health experts said.

A 23-month-old child died in Texas on Wednesday, becoming the first death from swine flu outside Mexico, where the H1N1 strain raised alarms when it killed young adults who are normally more resilient than babies and the elderly.

The virus has caused mainly minor symptoms in countries with confirmed infections outside Mexico, and the outbreak remains tiny in scale compared to other epidemics such as malaria, hepatitis, cholera and meningitis.

However, as it continues to spread epidemiologists worry that swine flu could have a devastating impact on people whose immune systems are weak due to the AIDS virus or other diseases.

World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Gregory Hartl said adults who suffered severe pneumonia and died from the virus in Mexico may in fact have fallen into this category.

"It is a question which a lot of our scientists have been looking at," Hartl told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, when asked why the deaths so far have been clustered in Mexico.

"Maybe people were infected with other illnesses too that made their illness more severe. Maybe they were immunologically suppressed," he said.

LOW IMMUNITY LEVELS KEY