Twenty-five people have died from swine flu in Ukraine with cases reported in a number of other countries, it has emerged.
Tetyana Dykhanovska, the director of Ukraine’s state flu centre, said today the deaths had taken place since the start of the country’s flu season.
It comes after other cases of the virus have been reported in India, Pakistan and Armenia.
Ukraine Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili said the flu outbreak was not yet widespread enough to be considered an epidemic.
Swine flu was responsible for a flu pandemic in the UK in 2009-10.
It was first identified in Mexico in 2009 was initially known as the Mexican flu.
It was known as swine flu because it resembles known flu viruses that cause illness in pigs.
It then spread from country to country because it was a new version of flu which few people were immune too.
During the pandemic in the UK, a small number of cases resulted in deaths. These were mostly among the very young or elderly.