Trinidad records fifth swine flu death

(Trinidad Guardian) Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh has con­firmed a fifth death as a re­sult of swine flu.

Deyals­ingh con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, some one week af­ter a woman who was 15 weeks preg­nant died from the virus. The min­is­ter did not di­vulge the de­tails of the case but con­firmed the pa­tient fell with­in the at-risk group.

The at-risk-groups are chil­dren aged six months to five years, preg­nant women, per­sons over 65, per­sons with chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions (such as di­a­betes mel­li­tus) and per­sons with chron­ic res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es (such as asth­ma).

Deyals­ingh said apart from the five con­firmed deaths there were oth­er fa­tal­i­ties which were sus­pect­ed to have been caused by H-1-N-1. How­ev­er, these cas­es are still un­con­firmed as blood sam­ples have been sent for test­ing.

Deyals­ingh al­so urged the pub­lic to take the in­fluen­za vac­cine and ex­pressed con­cern that there had been a drop in peo­ple seek­ing the vac­cine over the past few weeks af­ter a me­dia house ran a seg­ment on the ef­fects of the vac­cine on preg­nant women. He ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to take every pre­cau­tion to pro­tect their lives.

The Health Min­istry al­so con­firmed in a re­lease yes­ter­day that 20,000 in­fluen­za vac­cines ar­rived for dis­tri­b­u­tion to pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go. The ad­di­tion­al shots were re­ceived through the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion and had been or­dered af­ter re­port­ed short­ages of vac­cines in South Trinidad.