H1N1 flu outbreak kills 17 in Venezuela
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An outbreak of H1N1 flu has killed 17 people in Venezuela and infected another 250, private media and local authorities said on Monday.
H1N1, often referred to as swine flu, was a flu strain that swept around in the world in a 2009/2010 pandemic.
"We're suffering a tail-end of the pandemic," a former Venezuelan health minister, Rafael Orihuela, told a local TV station, commenting on the widespread reports of 17 deaths in the South American nation of 29 million people.
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Most of the cases were in border states near Colombia.
Venezuela's government has not confirmed the figures given by media and local health authorities. But officials said high-risk groups had largely been immunized, with 3 million vaccinations carried out so far this year.
The World Health Organization's (WHO) official data show 18,500 people were reported killed in the 2009/2010 H1N1 pandemic, but a study in The Lancet last year said the actual death toll may have been up to 15 times higher at more than 280,000.