Jharkhand witnessed its first casualty due to swine flu after a 50-year-old woman and a 29-year old man died in two different hospitals here late last night. The reasons for the deaths were confirmed on Tuesday when the throat swab reports arrived from the Kolkata-based National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) at the district surveillance centre.
Moreover, three samples out of seven sent for confirmatory test have been tested positive for swine flu virus (H1N1). The positive test reports were of the 50-year-old woman Sudha Joshi, a resident of Sundernagar, on the city outskirt, admitted in Brahmananda Narayana Super Speciality Hospital at Tamolia and 29-year-old man, Jai lal Jaiswal, a resident of Purulia Road in Mango, admitted in CCU of Tata Main Hospital. Both of them succumbed to the diseases last night. While the woman had been admitted on March 3, the man had been admitted on March 5.
The third positive case is of a seven-year-old girl, M Trisha admitted in Tata Main Hospital. The girl, a resident of Sonari, was discharged from the hospital last evening as she recovered. East Singhbhum integrated diseases surveillance program (IDSP) officer, Sahir Pall said that only three swine flu positive cases came from the Kolkata-based institution and all the remaining were negative including the one (seven-month boy) at Tata Main Hospital.
"Though the patients had symptoms of swine flu but only when we got the confirmatory results about throat swab that we informed the respective hospitals the reasons behind the deaths of the two patients. Fortunately, the condition of the other swine flu positive patient has improved considerably at Tata Main Hospital and would be discharged soon," said Pall.
Meanwhile, sources said that the 50-year-old woman got affected with swine flu virus during her stay at Vellore (Tamil Nadu) and in a strange coincidence, the 29-year-old man had also contracted the viral infection during visit to Coimbatore. While Tata Main Hospital officials said that 29-year old man was suffering from acute respiratory infection and that he was also kept in an isolation ward and treated for swine flu.
Meanwhile, the incident has sent alarm bell ringing through the state health department. The state surveillance officer, Ramesh Prasad is expected to visit the city soon to review the situation. "We have ordered the private and state-owned hospitals to take necessary precautions for isolation wards and ensure coordination with district health department. State surveillance officer will be in the city soon to review stock of Tamiflu and masks and also ensure special precautionary measures are being taken to safeguard people from swine flu," said an official of the health department.
"In 2009 it was swine flu and in the 2010 it was dengue and last year we were confronting viral fever outbreak so. I have never seen an outbreak of this kind of disease in my medical career spanning more than three decades," said Dr U K Srivastava, a prominent city doctor. According to experts, drastic change in weather conditions and fast depleting forest cover may have let the virus that hitherto confined to wild animals, prey the human beings. Unusual weather conditions seem to have triggered viral fevers on a large scale with scores of children and adult being admitted to the hospital with such complaints.