'I feel great,' says five-year-old Mexican boy living near 'ground zero' pig farm who may hold the key to swine flu outbreak



The five-year-old boy who is the earliest confirmed victim of swine flu so far has said he feels 'great'.

Edgar Hernandez - who has since recovered - fell sick on April 2 - nearly two weeks before anybody even knew the virus existed.



'I feel great,' he said today. 'But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lie down in bed.'

First survivor? Edgar Hernandez, four, at his home in La Gloria - where he survived swine flu

His mother, Maria, 34, said: 'I have very good faith in God, but I was so worried. I couldn't sleep because I had to be by his side taking care of him all the time.'



Edgar is from the village of La Gloria, whose residents say officials ignored their warnings of an unexplained outbreak for weeks.

A staggering 60 per cent of the 3,000 residents of La Gloria - which lies in the shadow of a massive U.S-owned pig farm - reported getting sick, including three children aged under two, who later died.



Villagers say state officials and factory bosses claimed the outbreak was caused by chilly weather and dust in the air.

Although many others fell ill earlier than Edgar, none have yet been confirmed as having had swine flu. By last night, the overall death toll in Mexico stood at 152.

The youngster's case came as more than 450 members of the community claimed they were suffering respiratory problems and symptoms similar to swine flu.

Locals gather outside Edgar's house in La Gloria as they await state governor Miguel Herrera yesterday

They claim they are ill from contamination spread by pig waste at nearby breeding farms partly owned by a U.S. company.

Edgar was treated in hospital and is now recovering, but two infants from the area died.

Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova told reporters a sample taken from a 4-year-old boy in Mexico's Veracruz state in early April tested positive for swine flu.



However, it is not known when the boy became infected.

As far back as late March, roughly one-sixth of the members of this community of 3,000 in the Gulf coast state began suffering from severe respiratory infections.

They say they can directly trace the infections to a farm that lies upwind five miles (8.5 kilometres) to the north, in the town of Xaltepec.

Victor Calderon, General Director of pig farms run by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, speaks to the press outside Edgar's home in La Gloria. Locals claim the farms are ground zero for the outbreak

Mexican officials say they haven't determined the origin of the country's swine flu outbreak, which has caused at least 20 deaths so far.

But Jose Luis Martinez, a 34-year-old resident of La Gloria, said he knew the minute he heard about the outbreak on the news, with symptoms including a fever, coughing, joint aches, severe headache and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.

'When we saw it on the television, we said to ourselves, 'This is what we had,'' he said. 'It all came from here. ... The symptoms they are suffering are the same that we had here.'

Martinez and Bertha Crisostomo, a liaison between the villagers and the municipal government of Perote to which La Gloria belongs, say half of the people from the town live and work in Mexico City most of the week.

That means they could easily have spread the swine flu in the capital, where the largest number of cases have been reported.

Edgar lives in La Gloria - where many residents commute to Mexico City

Granjas Carroll de Mexico, 50 per cent owned by Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, Inc., has eight farms in the area.



Smithfield spokeswoman Keira Ullrich said the company has found no clinical signs or symptoms of the presence of swine influenza in its swine herd or its employees working at its joint ventures anywhere in Mexico.

Residents say they have been bothered for years by the fetid smell of one the farms which lies upwind of the community and suspect their water and air has been contaminated by waste.

When an Associated Press team entered the farm on Monday, cars were sprayed with water.



Manager Victor Ochoa required the visitors to shower and don white overalls, rubber boots and masks before entering any of the 18 warehouses where 15,000 pigs are kept.

Ochoa showed the journalists that a black plastic lid covered a swimming pool-size cement container of pig feces, to prevent exposure to the outside air.

'All of our pigs have been adequately vaccinated and they are all taken care of according to current sanitation rules,' Ochoa asserted.



'What happened in La Gloria was an unfortunate coincidence with a big and serious problem that is happening now with this new flu virus.'

Martinez said residents have been fighting for years to force the company to improve their pig-waste management.



Mexican news media reported that a municipal health official traced the source of a disease outbreak in La Gloria to a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste.

Local health officials and Federal Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova downplayed claims that the swine flu epidemic could have started in la Gloria, noting that of 30 mucous samples taken from victims of respiratory diseases there, only one - that of Edgar Hernandez - came back positive.



Cordova insisted the rest of the community had suffered from a common influenza.

Mexican Agriculture Department officials said yesterday that its inspectors found no sign of swine flu among pigs around the farm in Veracruz, and that no infected pigs have been found yet anywhere in Mexico.



However, the inspections may have been less than complete: Ochoa, the farm manager, said no one from the government has inspected his farm for swine flu.

Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, supported officials' assessment of the pig situation and said there is no evidence of sick or dying swine in Mexico.

Lubroth noted that Mexico has a surveillance system that previously eliminated an unrelated disease from the country's commercial pig population, which he said is a good indication that they also are conducting adequate reviews of pigs for swine flu.

Dr. Alejandro Escobar Mesa, deputy director for the control and prevention of disease for the state of Veracruz, said the epidemic in La Gloria was a combination of viral and bacterial illnesses, caused by an unusually dry climate.

'The dust dries up the mucous membranes and facilitates environmental conditions for the transmission of illnesses,' Escobar said.

But residents here say they are certain that Edgar Hernandez was not the only swine flu victim in their town.

Concepcion Llorente, a first-grade teacher in La Gloria, says authorities still owe the town some answers.

'They said that what we had here was an atypical flu, but if the boy tested positive for swine flu, where did he get it from?'

