Health bosses in Gloucestershire this morning urged parents not to throw swine flu "parties".

Shona Arora, the county's director of public health, said there was not yet enough known about the virus.

Her comments came after reports of parents holding play sessions to deliberately expose their children to the virus in an attempt to get immunity while it was in a fairly mild form.

She said: "I can understand why people would want to hold them and in most cases the virus is mild.

"Nationally, with the three deaths, the people affected had underlying health issues but internationally there have been a handful of cases where people who have died have had no previous problems."

She said although the current number of cases in the county was less than 20 it was not yet known how swine flu would spread.

She added: "It is hard to tell how the virus will progress, so to encourage people to expose themselves to a health risk is not acceptable.

"With chicken pox parties it is different because we know about the disease."