The UK reported its first death to H1N1 swine flu on Sunday after a 38-year old mother from Glasgow died in a Scottish hospital days after she gave birth to her baby prematurely.
The patient, named locally as Jacqui Fleming, had underlying health problems and is thought to have died while receiving treatment at the at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. She had been in intensive care there since last month, reported The Herald.
Fleming was one of 10 patients being treated for swine flu in greater Glasgow, reported the BBC.
Her death is the first reported outside of the Americas, where according to the World Health Organization’s latest update, 145 people have died.
Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon expressed her condolences to Fleming’s family:
“This is a tragedy for those concerned and they have my heartfelt sympathy,” she told the press. She went on to stress although this death was tragic, people should note that the vast majority of H1N1 infections have been relatively mild.
35 new cases of swine flu were reported in Scotland on Sunday, bringing to 500 the number people infected in Scotland, out of 1,261 confirmed cases in the UK as a whole, reported the BBC earlier today.
According to figures from the NHS, England has reported over 750 cases, while Northern Ireland has reported 8 and Wales 3. Nearly 500 other cases are being investigated in the UK.
Professor Hugh Pennington, a bacteriologist at Aberdeen University, said in the case of Fleming, underlying health problems were most likely a “significant factor” in her death, and while it is “very sad”, because of the numbers, it was to be expected that a death would occur sooner or later.
However, it does not mean the virus is getting “nastier”, said Pennington. So far there is no evidence that the virus is changing, he told the press.
“This is a flu virus, it is in no way different from an ordinary winter flu virus, so if there are enough cases some people will have to be admitted to hospital and some will die,” he explained in a report from The Herald.
Relative to the size of population, Scotland is one of the worst-hit nations. Health officials there expect up to one third of Scots will become infected with H1N1, or around 1.7 million people.
However, professor John Oxford, an expert on viruses told the BBC that he thinks the chances of catching the swine are still “remote”, especially over the summer months, and people should not panic.
Health ministers urged people to go about their daily lives as normal and not change their behaviour because of the virus.
Unlike seasonal flu though, the H1N1 virus does not appear to be striking older people. So far in Scotland, only one person over the age of 65 has been infected, while 88 per cent of the cases are among people aged 45 and under. Experts sugggest that older people may have gained some immunity during the pandemics of 1957 and 1968.
Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Margaret Chan, said in a speech last week that the world must prepare for more deaths, and that experts were particularly concerned about how the virus will affect poorer nations.
She said it was clear that pregnant women were at higher risk of complications if they caught the virus, and given its prevalence among younger age groups, this is a particularly worrying pattern for poorer countries where deaths among expectant and new mothers is significantly higher than in wealthier nations.
Source: BBC News, The Herald, WHO, NHS.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD