11. 11. 09. - 16:00

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11. 11. 09. - 16:00

Swine flu patient dies

By Lisa Chapman

A 39-year-old Romanian hospitalised with swine flu in Schwarzach in Salzburg’s Pongau region died yesterday (Tues), doctors have said.

Salzburg public-health director Christoph König said the construction worker, who died of a heart attack, had already been very weak when he entered the hospital and died soon after he was put into intensive care.

He said the man’s fever had suddenly risen and he had started vomiting, triggering a series of complications including shocked lungs and, finally, a heart attack.

König added people younger than 50 who were especially susceptible to complications if they got swine flu, explaining that people in that age group had stronger immune systems that often went out of control and attacked their own bodies.

The man was the second victim of swine flu in Austria.

An 11-year-old girl from South Tyrol, Italy, hospitalised in Innsbruck with swine flu died early this month after 10 days in intensive care.

Christoph Wenisch, a specialist on infections at Vienna’s Kaiser Franz-Josef Hospital, told Austrian broadcaster ORF after speaking with colleagues in Innsbruck that the girl's immune system had run "out of control" after she suffered from a bacterial infection and was then infected by the swine flu virus A/H1N1.

In a related development, a third person, a 77-year-old man, has been moved into intensive care with swine flu at Salzburg provincial clinic (SALK).

He had been hospitalised because of a chronic kidney problem and then infected with swine flu by a visiting grandchild who had the disease.

Two other swine flu victims are also in intensive care at SALK. An Upper Austrian man, 58, had been transferred there from a Linz hospital after contracting a lung infection and falling into septic shock. He has been put into an artificial coma and put on a breathing machine.

A 41-year-old man from Bavaria who has been in intensive care for two weeks at SALK remains in critical condition.

The life of all three patients in intensive care is in danger, SALK staff have said.

Meanwhile Franz X. Heinz, the head of the Clinical Institute for Virology at Vienna Medical University, said today there had been 10,800 cases of swine flu in the greater Vienna area in the last week.

He added that current information indicated a wave of swine flu had begun in Austria. "We have had a big increase in the number of cases," he said, adding there had been a huge increase in the number of cases among people 14 years of age or younger.

The Austrian Society for Medical Care of Children and Adolescents said yesterday all children should be immunised against both swine and seasonal flu. It said 50 per cent of swine flu victims were children and adolescents.

As a result of the spread of swine flu, the Statutory Social Insurance Association has decided that people can buy anti-viral medication Tamiflu with a doctor’s prescription.

People are also responding to doctors’ recommendations that they be vaccinated. More than 9,000 people had been vaccinated as of yesterday evening in Vienna, Burgenland, Lower Austria, Styria, Salzburg, Carinthia and Vorarlberg.

In Vienna, 6,900 people had been vaccinated as of 3pm yesterday. President Heinz Fischer and his wife Margit were among those vaccinated yesterday.

Social Democratic (SPÖ) Health Minister Alois Stöger said yesterday: "We have prepared for the predicted wave of swine flu cases as well as possible."

The Health Ministry announced yesterday that it had increased the so-called mitigation level from stage one to stage two within the framework of pandemic alarm stage 6, the highest.

The change goes into effect today, meaning all healthcare institutions will report new cases of swine flu to a central office that will record the cases countrywide.

The ministry said it had used a similar system to track outbreaks of seasonal flu and it had clearly shown both when they began and ended.

Suspect cases would in future be considered swine flu cases and trips abroad would no longer be used as epidemiology criteria, the ministry added.

Health-insurance funds will cover the cost of the vaccinations except for a fee of 4.90 Euros a dose. Doctors recommend that people receive two doses of the vaccine three weeks apart.

Austrian Times

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