Are you planning a travel or planning to relocate?? Do you have any idea about the flu trends there? For you or for your spouse or kids, it may not be such a good idea for travel if you are not aware of the flu trends. Or is it just you are curious about the epidemics in your place and you would like to know if you are at high risk and would like to know how to stay protected? That’s when you need know about the updates of the flu trends.
Last year when the H1N1 outbreak was there, I’m sure all of us did a mighty search about it and was well updated on the precautions we needed to take! Social media takes a vital role in health issues by educating people about what illnesses are around and what are precautions that are needed to be taken. I’m sure that Social media does its part in preventing the spread of epidemics to a certain extent.
- Google Flu Trends
- World Health Organization
- Center for Diseases Control and Prevention
- HealthMap
Google Flu trends was introduced with the concept of preventing disease outbreaks. It clearly shows the intensity of the flu that is going around on a scale of Intense, High, Moderate, Low and Minimal. Currently it caters to 28 countries, but it is sure to rise and gradually include all the countries.
You can access the Google Flu Trends at http://www.google.org/flutrends/
The World Health Organization, WHO, the grandfather of health issues, is a very informative and authentic site that can be accessed to know the health information. The WHO has created a FluNet in 1996, which could be used to track the influenza related information. Using FluNet, we can search an interactive database, view reports and also get the situation updates of every country.
You can find more details about it at http://www.who.int/topics/influenza/en/
The Center for Diseases Control and Prevention, CDC, is a source of credible health information of the United States. The CDC collects data related flu activity and surveillance in the US. the CDC has a FluView which is a weekly Influenza surveillance report prepared by the Influenza division for each state in the US.
You can access it by going to http://www.cdc.gov/flu/
HealthMap is another tool to monitor the outbreaks of diseases. Using HealthMap we can have a fairly good idea about the current global state of various infectious diseases. It has collaborations with Flu.gov, WHO, Geosentinel, EuroSurveillance, ProMED Mail and Global Public Health Intelligence Network, to mention a few. It is also used for the early detection of the infectious diseases and to provide awareness about it. You can access the site by visiting http://healthmap.org/en/
