Pregnant woman dies of swine flu, toll rises to 26

PUNE: The swine flu toll in the city went up to 26 with a pregnant woman succumbing to the H1N1 virus at the ICU of a private hospital on Friday.While the contagion claimed three lives in Karnataka, another person succumbed to the virus at Nashik in Maharashtra, pushing the national toll to 83. Rupali Jori (28) of Malkhed village in Haveli taluka, who was moved to the Sahyadri Munot hospital in the city on August 20, died at 8 pm on Friday, PMC deputy health officer D D Chandakkar said. Chandakkar said Rupali Jori had tested positive for the H1N1 influenza. “Rupali, who was pregnant for 20 weeks, showed symptoms of cough, fever and breathlessness. Her condition was critical when she was moved to the isolation ICU of our hospital. She was immediately put on the ventilator, but her condition deteriorated on Friday,” Rajkumar Ambad, medical administrator of Sahyadri Munot hospital said. Earlier, the patient was treated at a private hospital in Wadgaon Dhayri. “But she didn’t show any signs of improvement. Hence, she was moved to our hospital on August 20. Her condition was critical. She had slipped into acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS),” Chandakkar added. District collector Chandrakant Dalvi said three people tested positive for the H1N1 virus in the city. A total of 18 patients are in ICUs of various hospitals in city. Out of these, nine are critical and six are on ventilators. Four patients were taken off ventilators on Friday, he said, adding that 7,610 people were screened in the district, of whom 322 were given Tamiflu doses. “So far, over 2.73 lakh people have visited screening centres in the district, which has till now recorded 845 positive patients for the H1N1 flu.” Dalvi said the volume of positive samples and number of visitors, especially children, at screening centres have come down in the last week.