Flu's 'Ground Zero' May Be Mexican 5-Year-Old

4-year-old boy survived flu in village near huge pig farm
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 28, 2009 5:44 AM CDT
Flu's 'Ground Zero' May Be Mexican 5-Year-Old
Margarita Hernandez, who claims to have recovered from swine flu, protests against health workers while waiting for state Governor Miguel Herrera to arrive in La Gloria village yesterday.   (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Mexican authorities have tracked the first known case of a mutant strain of swine flu to a boy in a village near a huge pig farm, the Guardian reports. Edgar Hernandez, 4, survived the outbreak of illness in the eastern Mexico village of La Gloria in February, but two babies died from what residents now believe was the same flu that is spreading across Mexico and around the world.

"When we saw it on the television, we said to ourselves, 'This is what we had,'" one resident told the AP. The village is 12 miles from a US-owned industrial pig production facility. Its owner says the plant is free of swine flu, although residents of La Gloria have long complained about the plant's lagoons of excrement and the huge clouds of flies that surround them.
(More Edgar Hernandez stories.)

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