By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas’ death toll from swine flu already stands at 18 today, weeks before the usual start of the flu season, the state Department of Health said.

“Looking at where we are right now, no one can remember a flu season where we’ve had so many deaths before November. Our flu season normally doesn’t even get started until December,” Health Department spokesman Ed Barham said.

“It’s been five decades since we’ve had flu season extend all through the summer,” Barham said, noting a swine flu epidemic in the United States in the late 1950s.

Arkansas recorded 35 deaths related to the seasonal flu in 2008 and two so far this year.

Barham said he could not release the names, ages or locations of any of the swine flu victims in the state.

Word of the rising death toll comes less than two weeks after health officials conducted a series of mass clinics around the state, dispensing nearly 24,000 doses of swine flu vaccine to people in high risk groups such as children and pregnant women. Nearly 149,000 people also were vaccinated for the seasonal flu during those clinics.

Barham said today that more doses of the swine flu vaccine are arriving in the state daily and by the end of the month anyone who wants the vaccine should be able to get it.

People in high risk groups — pregnant women, people under 24, people who live with or care for children, health care and emergency medical services personnel, and adults with underlying conditions — should check with their doctors to see if the vaccine is available.

Meanwhile, Dr. James Phillips, director of the infectious disease branch at the Department of Health, said in a news release that a second round of mass vaccination clinics to offer free swine flu vaccine is being planned.

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