Health expert: country on the brink of swine flu epidemic

A Czech health expert has warned that the country may be on the brink of a swine flu epidemic. Václav Chmelík, who helped draw-up a pandemic crisis plan for the Health Ministry said he expected a rapid increase in swine-flu cases in the coming weeks, predicting that the epidemic could reach a head within two months. To date health authorities have registered 351 cases, close to 40 of them in the last week alone. Sixteen cases were reported at a high school in the south Bohemian town of České Budějovice, after a group of students and teachers became infected on a school trip to Bavaria. The disease claimed its first victim in the Czech Republic earlier this month when a 31 year old woman from Karlovy Vary died of multiple organ failure shortly after being diagnosed with swine flu.