On Monday, the Health Ministries of Israel and Saudi Arabia reported their countries’ first deaths from H1N1 swine influenza.
The Israeli Health Ministry confirmed that a 35-year old man, Shimon Azran, was infected with the novel H1N1 virus when he died, but did not confirm whether the virus had caused his death, reported Israel’s daily newspaper Haaretz. Azran was admitted to hospital in Eilat after experiencing symptoms of pneumonia. Tests performed after his death confirmed the presence of H1N1 in his body.
The Saudi Arabian Health Ministry said that a 30-year old male Saudi citizen died of swine flu on Saturday, according to Arab media group Al Bawaba. The man was admitted to hospital with symptoms that included coughing, high fever, and difficulty breathing. He was given Tamiflu but his condition got worse.
These two deaths bring the total of deaths to swine flu in the Middle East to three. The first reported death in the region was of a 25-year old woman who died in Egypt after returning from a pilgrimage to Umrah in Saudi Arabia. She died in hospital on 18 July after testing positive for the H1N1 swine flu virus, said the Egyptian Health Ministry. Her symptoms on admission were “rheumatic fever, lack of oxygen in the blood and a stroke” said a MENA news agency report.
According to Israel’s health ministry, there have now been more than 1,300 confirmed cases of H1N1 swine flu in Israel.
A two-year old from Bnei Brak who died on Sunday after being hospitalized with symptoms of pneumonia has since been confirmed as not being infected with H1N1. This followed news of two new cases of swine flu in Israel last Wednesday, a 50-year old man and a 13-year old girl, both of whom are in hospital.
Meanwhile four other swine flu patients in hospital in Israel, including a female tourist from Sweden, and a mother who has recently given birth, are said to be improving.
Saudi Arabia has reported 294 confirmed cases of swine flu, more than any other Arab country.
Health ministers are planning to ban children, the elderly and people with chronic illnesses from this year’s annual Haj pilgrimage. At least 2 million people attended the last event, which this year falls in November.
On 16 July, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it would stop issuing updates on pandemic H1N1 cases and deaths around the world because the virus was so widespread, and in fact had spread in 6 weeks as widely as previous pandemics had spread in 6 months.
The global agency also said on the 24th of July that many countries where the virus has spread widely have moved to testing only samples of people who are ill, and have moved from counting individual cases to watching trends.
But the WHO said it would still report on swine flu cases and deaths in newly affected countries.
Sources: Arab News, Al Bawaba, BBC, Haaretz, Irin News, WHO.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD