The Turkmenistan government wishes the swine flu would just go away. Image by Flickr user Ben Chau.

Editor’s note: Has Turkmenistan come down with a bad case of the swine flu?  neweurasia’s Annasoltan investigates in this new post series on Turkmen healthcare.  Meanwhile, neweurasia’s Timur and Bakhrom debate whether the disease is a serious threat.  Read the rest of our ongoing coverage on the disease here.

The Turkmen authorities haven’t reported a single case of swine flu in the country.  Meanwhile, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 200 countries have reported cases of pandemic influenza  H1N1, including over 6,000 deaths worldwide by mid-November.  Is Turkmenistan an oasis of health?

Don’t be fooled by this “miracle”.  The American author Mark Twain once said, “There’s lies, damn lies, and statistics”, and Turkmenistan is a country that proves him right.

But for once there’s a new twist to the same old story: of all the pandemics to sweep the globe in the last twenty years, this one seems to be giving the Turkmen authorities a serious headache.

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