Posted on 06/24/2009 8:04:24 AM PDT by metmom
Within minutes, six-year-old Rubjit Thindal went from happily chatting in the back seat of the car to collapsing and dying in her father's arms.
"If we had known it was so serious, we would have called 911,'' Kuldip Thindal, Rubjit's distraught mother, said in Punjabi yesterday. "She just had a stomach ache -- she wasn't even crying.''
Rubjit was pronounced dead at hospital barely 24 hours after showing signs of a fever. Later, doctors told her parents she had the H1N1 influenza virus. She is believed to be the youngest person in Canada with the virus to have died.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.guelphmercury.com ...
CA:
School nurses critical in effort to contain flu
Some wonder if shortage in nation, valley will jeopardize kids
October 13, 2009
Michelle Mitchell
The Desert Sun
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20091013/NEWS04/910130306/1006/news01/School-nurses-critical-in-effort-to-contain-flu
The possibility of a large swine flu outbreak this school year has raised questions about whether a shortage of school nurses will lead to more students getting the H1N1 virus.
The three Coachella Valley school districts do not meet the nurse-to-student ratio of 1-to-750 recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each district has five to nine full-time registered nurses who split their time among several schools.
But local school officials say despite the shortage, they have implemented safeguards to adequately protect students.
“It would always be great to have more; that’s a given,” said Laura Fisher, Coachella Valley Unified’s director of pupil services and special education. “I don’t think that the health of the district is in jeopardy by the number of nurses we have.”
When the swine flu emerged last spring, a school nurse in New York City — Mary Pappas at St. Francis Preparatory School — helped identify and curtail the nation’s first major outbreak after she noticed a lot of students complaining of high fevers and sore throats.
Coachella Valley school nurses have to balance three to five schools each and spend much of their time helping students who need daily care or those with special health care needs. That leaves little to no time for the everyday stomachache or sore throat.
Schools depend on teachers, principals and secretaries with little medical training to identify, isolate and send home sick children, as well as monitor absences and illnesses for signs of a wider outbreak.
“We have done a specialized training with them this year” in response to swine flu, said Elka Kelly-Parker, director of student support services and special education at Desert Sands Unified School District.
Nurses are available by cell phone for emergencies.
School staff members can administer certain medications and take temperatures, among other tasks that don’t require assessment or skill of a medical professional.
“Ninety percent of it is ice and owies,” Lori Klingensmith, administrative assistant at Indio’s Andrew Jackson Elementary, said of her health office duties.
Klingensmith has the advantage of being a medic, and said that extra training is a big help in determining the difference between a serious and minor nosebleed, allergies and pink eye — something not all schools have when nurses are not on site.
“It’s just basic common sense,” said Palm Springs Unified School District lead nurse Gennette Furtado. “If you do have a nurse there, they’ll be more apt to find more things than if there wasn’t.”
But Furtado and others said the system is working.
Klingensmith and other office staff double-check each other to spot changing or missed symptoms and the school is particularly careful about the first line of defense against the flu — student hand-washing and disinfecting common items.
When it comes to flu-like symptoms, all schools have very specific requirements about when to send a student home — symptoms such as a 100-degree fever or vomiting that don’t require a medical degree to distinguish.
“We have to be black and white,” Furtado said.
Since it was first identified in April, swine flu has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed nearly 600, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
So far, swine flu does not appear to be more dangerous than seasonal flu, which kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year, but it appears to be more contagious and health officials are concerned it could mutate and become deadlier.
Federal health officials are urging parents to have their kids vaccinated.
In districts that have them, school nurses are developing plans to screen and quarantine sick students, teaching students proper classroom hygiene, urging parents to keep ill children at home, organizing vaccination campaigns and instructing teachers and school staff how to identify sick students.
“I think that it isn’t the amount of nurses that will help less kids get the flu,” Kelly-Parker said. “I think it’s education and what system you set up in your schools to help monitor that.”
Officials emphasized that parents need to be aware of symptoms and keep their kids home if they are sick.
Parents’ actions are more important than the number of school nurses, said parent Mike Mullen, who recently kept his daughter home from kindergarten.
“It should be the parents’ responsibility that when their child is sick, she should stay home,” he said.
Additional Facts
Survey finds school nurse shortages
A 2008 survey by the National Association of School Nurses found only 45 percent of public schools have their own full-time nurse, another 30 percent have a part-time nurse, and a quarter don’t have any nurses.
The average nurse-to-student ratio nationwide was one nurse for every 1,151 students, but in 14 states, there was only one nurse for more than 2,000 students, according to the nurses association.
States with the highest ratios include Oregon with one nurse for every 3,142 students; Michigan with one for every 4,204; and Utah with one for every 4,893.
Only 12 states, mostly in the Northeast, met the 1-750 ratio the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.
In California, where there was one nurse for every 2,240 students last year, roughly half of the state’s 1,000 school districts do not have any nurses at all.
Obese hit hard by swine flu in Mexico, Canada
October 13, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/1821175,CST-NWS-flu13.article
Rapidly worsening breathing problems in the sickest H1N1 flu patients in Mexico and Canada suggest a scary worst-case scenario for what doctors in the United States will face as winter flu season sets in, new reports suggest.
In the first wave of the global swine flu outbreak, many critically ill patients in both countries were obese, though their death rates weren’t higher than others. Many in both countries also were younger than those typically hard hit by seasonal flu, as has been found in the United States.
Rapidly worsening breathing problems in the sickest H1N1 flu patients in Mexico and Canada suggest a scary worst-case scenario for what doctors in the United State will face as winter flu season sets in, new reports suggest.
Patients studied worsened quickly after being admitted to hospitals. Most survived after intensive, lengthy treatment, though the death rate in the Mexican patients who were studied — 41 percent — was much higher.
The reports were published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
They aren’t a true snapshot on prevalence. But a journal editorial says they provide clues on what hospitals elsewhere might see in coming months.
Houston, TX:
Local swine flu deaths jump to 11
By TODD ACKERMAN and CINDY GEORGE Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 13, 2009, 12:01AM
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6664535.html
In what experts suggested should awaken people to the threat, swine flu has been the cause of death in nine more people in the Houston area than previously reported, according to new data from state and local health departments.
The additional H1N1 deaths, which increase the area’s total from two to 11, include six in Harris County, two in Fort Bend County and one in Brazoria County. The 11 victims represent all age groups.
“It’s truly alarming that there are this many deaths this early,” Dr. Paul Glezen, lead epidemiologist at Baylor College of Medicine’s Influenza Research Center. “Polls show people are blase and unconcerned, but this should give them an idea of the virus’ lethal nature.”
WHO eyes Nov. flu vaccine shipment to poor nations
By FRANK JORDANS
BUSINESSWEEK
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9B9LA182.htm
The World Health Organization hopes to begin shipping 60 million doses of swine flu vaccine to poor countries in November as part of an effort to protect their fragile health systems from the pandemic, it said Monday.
WHO wants to provide doctors and nurses in about 100 countries with vaccines over the coming four to five months, using a stockpile provided by drug companies and donor countries, said vaccine chief Marie-Paule Kieny.
“The primary target for this round of distribution is health care workers,” she told reporters in Geneva.
This has had me down 3 days, Fever, joint pain, head ache, sinus, this morning I feel like myself but with a little less energy.
Here in New Mexico, they are telling us all flu is H1N1, the seasonal has not started yet.
Oxygen treatment key to swine flu survival
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
Nicky Phillips
ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/10/13/2711206.htm
Doctors believe intensive care management saved many with swine flu patients in Australia
Swine flu deaths in Australia could have doubled without the use of a mechanical heart and lung treatment, says doctor.
A new Australian and New Zealand study, published in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found 79% of swine flu patients treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) survived.Intensive care specialist Dr Daryl Jones of Monash University in Melbourne, says ECMO is an artificial heart and lung machine.
It takes the blood out of the body, removes the carbon dioxide and replaces it with oxygen and then sends the blood back in and around the body, he says.
The study collected data on swine flu patients from all 15 centres that offer ECMO treatment in Australia and New Zealand.
Of the 5000 people infected with swine flu in Australia and New Zealand that needed hospitalisation, 61 required treatment with ECMO, he says.
Jones says that’s a significant increase on the amount of people who’ve required ECMO in the past.
“Last year only four patients across Australia and New Zealand required ECMO during winter.”
Young vulnerable
Jones says unlike seasonal influenza, swine flu affected many young adults.
“A substantial number of young people became very sick with pneumonia [due to] the virus or a secondary infection,” he says.
According to Jones, when patients become very short of breath and have respiratory failure, they’re put on a ventilator. If that doesn’t work, ECMO treatment is the last resort.
Paediatrician Professor Robert Booy, of the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney, says patients that require ECMO are “extremely unwell and teetering on death.”
Of the 61 swine flu patients treated with ECMO, 79% survived, which Booy says is “very impressive.”
Without ECMO, about 90% of people suffering from severe influenza associated respiratory failure would have died, he says.
But Booy says the current swine flu death rate statistics in Australia are “hiding” those saved from intensive care management.
“When we say we’ve had just under 200 deaths, the numbers could easily have been twice that, but for the fact we’ve got such high quality intensive care in Australia and New Zealand.”
Booy says the study is extremely important, and demonstrates that intensive care doctors across Australia and New Zealand have a “superb” network, which allows them to publish important research quickly.
Jones admits the study was unable to determine the survival rate of those with severe respiratory failure associated with swine flu who did not receive ECMO treatment.
Warning saved lives
He says Australian clinicians were “forewarned” of what to expect before swine flue arrived in Australia, by the experiences of doctors in Mexico and the US.
When the outbreak of swine flu was announced in Mexico, he says a lot of young people were presenting with severe pneumonia.
“They also reported a very high fatality rate per case of infection.”
Jones hopes their study will be of similar value to the Northern Hemisphere who have yet to experience swine flu outbreaks during winter.
“Given what we learned from the Mexican experience, we felt we had an obligation to reciprocally provide advanced warning for people in the north.”
An editorial also published in the latest edition of JAMA written by Dr Douglas White and Dr Derek Angus, both of the University of Pittsburgh, says any deaths from swine flu will be regrettable.
“But those that result from insufficient planning and inadequate preparation will be especially tragic.”
I’m glad your feeling better this morning. I heard that taking Vitamin C & Vitamin D3 has helped with the H1N1 flu.
I read that 99% of all flu is the H1N1 / swine flu type .
Usually the flu doesn’t start to effect people until Jan / Feb .
The h1n1 was still effecting people during the summer months which is all most unheard of ....
Scotland:
40% rise in swine flu deaths in 48 hours as two more die
heraldscotland staff
Published on 12 Oct 2009
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/40-rise-in-swine-flu-deaths-in-48-hours-as-two-more-die-1.925845
The number of swine flu deaths in Scotland has soared by 40% in just 48 hours, after the Scottish Government confirmed last night that a further two people died after contracting the virus.
The patients, a 48-year-old man from Greater Glasgow and Clyde and an 81-year-old Fife woman, were both carrying the H1N1 strain.
Their deaths take the total swine flu fatalities to 14, marking a sudden increase in the number of deaths since Glasgow mother Jacqui Fletcher became the UK’s first swine flu victim in June.
On Sunday, it emerged a 42-year-old Glasgow man and a 75-year-old man from Grampian died after contracting the virus.
No further details about the latest victims would be released at the request of their families, the Government said.
While the 48-year-old patient had “significant underlying health conditions” that contributed to his death, H1N1 was a “contributory factor” in the death of the pensioner.
Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: “Our thoughts are with the families and friends of both patients, and I express my sincere condolences to everyone who knew them. In the vast majority of cases, most people have fairly mild symptoms and make a full recovery within a week.”
She added: “Vaccination is the best defence we have against the H1N1 virus and Scotland is preparing well for the first phase of the vaccination programme which is due to start later this month.”
Figures released last week showed the number of people being admitted to hospital in Scotland with swine flu has reached a record high.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8301879.stm
EU to meet on swine flu plans
video...
EU health ministers are to meet in Luxembourg on Monday to decide what more they can do to tackle the swine flu virus. Six months after the virus broke out, mass vaccines are being rolled out across the world. Jonathan Josephs looks at the impact of H1N1 so far.
KY:
Floyd County students vaccinated for H1N1 virus
Posted: Oct 12, 2009 5:36 PM EDT
Updated: Oct 12, 2009 6:28 PM EDT
By Maira Ansari
Posted by Charles Gazaway
http://www.wave3.com/Global/story.asp?S=11300723
NEW ALBANY, IN (WAVE) – As Kentucky health officials report a second swine flu death in Lexington that brings the state total to five, school children in one southern Indiana county are getting their first dose of the H1N1 vaccination. Floyd County is targeting three schools that have the highest cases of H1N1.
Students at Children’s Academy in New Albany were among those at three schools getting the H1N1 vaccination.
“I would rather he get vaccinated then not and end up with the swine flu” said Dallas Griffin, a parent.
Griffin, who stopped by the school to check on his son, said he did his research. “At first I was afraid because it was manufactured new. At first I was worried about side effects as far as the research I’ve done it’s the best thing for him.”
100 students out of 300 were vaccinated at Children’s Academy. 234 out of 650 were vaccinated at Mt. Tabor Elementary and 120 out of 400 were vaccinated at Green Valley Elementary.
“We had about 30% of the parents sign consents to have their children immunized some of those children were not appropriate for the mist type vaccine and will have to have an injection later on once it’s available,” said Dr. Tom Harris of the Floyd County Health Department.
Dr. Harris says despite having nasal congestion and some sneezing after getting vaccinated, the vaccine can prevent a whole lot of aches in pain in the long run.
“The antibodies don’t form immediately. It usually takes two to three weeks to get a full antibody response from it. And children under nine are probably going to require a second dose which we will give down the road,” Dr. Harris said
Eventually, students at all Floyd County schools will have a chance to get the H1N1 vaccination. The Floyd County Health Department is expecting to get injectable vaccination this week.
FL:
Swine flu vaccine due today: Pregnant women to be initial beneficiaries
By STACEY SINGER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2009/10/13/a1b_firstshots_1013.html#
The first 900 vials of swine flu vaccine are expected to arrive in Palm Beach County ahead of schedule today, and health officials plan to direct them to pregnant women, one of the groups most vulnerable to severe complications from the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus.
That's the naming convention which has been used in the past, and continuing to call it "swine flu" is misleading at best.
It's the MEXICAN FLU, folks.
And as far as I know, it's being OVERREPORTED like crazy right now.
I personally know two people who have probably had it, and many more who had regular, garden-variety flu. But many hospitals are just reporting EVERY flu case as H1N1, without any evidence whatsoever.
Why is this, the MEXICAN FLU, being treated this way?
How can we know what's really going on when there is such sloppy treatment of facts???
NW Ind. work-release center locked down over flu
Associated Press
5:46 AM CDT, October 13, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-in-flu-lockdown,0,7350493.story
CROWN POINT, Ind.
Officials in northwestern Indiana’s Lake County confined about 160 inmates at a work-release center after one inmate was hospitalized with severe flu symptoms.
Lake County Community Corrections director Kellie Bittorf says the illness wasn’t immediately confirmed as swine flu but that the staff was taking necessary precautions.
Convicted criminals serving their sentences in the Crown Point center have been barred from leaving for work or receiving visitors since Saturday.
The lock down does include a separate work-release program with about 150 inmates operated by the Lake County Sheriff’s Department in the same building.
Ohio hospitals urge state to reconsider flu respirator masks
By Harlan Spector, The Plain Dealer
October 13, 2009, 6:00AM
http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2009/10/hospitals_urge_state_to_recons.html
With debate churning over how to prevent the spread of H1N1 flu, Ohio hospitals are asking public health officials to relax recommendations that health-care workers wear special respirator masks for routine care of flu patients.
The Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have advised that health-care workers wear masks called N95 respirators. The masks filter out viruses and are fitted to form a seal around the nose and mouth.
N95 masks are in short supply, and health groups and experts disagree over whether they are necessary in routine clinical situations.
I have been blessed with a good immune system, now lets hope my wife doesn't get it, I wouldn't let any of the grand kids come by and I won't for several more days.
Once we are sure we are done we will bleach the door knobs and clean everything else before those kids can come over.
They only count cases if you’re in the hospital , & now reports are if you DIE from the Mexican flu it WON’T be counted either .....
U.S. says too many swine flu cases to count
Governments worldwide stop tracking illnesses and deaths from H1N1 virus
updated 10:11 a.m. CT, Fri., Oct . 9, 2009
ATLANTA - U.S. health officials have lost track of how many illnesses and deaths have been caused by the first global flu epidemic in 40 years.
And they did it on purpose.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33239736/ns/health-swine_flu
Study: Swine flu hits relatively healthy young women
Monday, October 12, 2009
BY SUSAN K. LIVIO
State House Bureau
http://www.northjersey.com/news/Study_Swine_flu_hits_relatively_healthy_young_women.html
Patients who became the most critically ill with swine flu and those who died were relatively healthy young women — not the elderly and chronically ill as many still believe, according to an article released yesterday by the Journal of the American Medical Association.
THANKS FOR THE PINGS.
Thanks , I appreciate reading what worked for you .
As for the Colt’s being 1st AFC South (5-0-0)
I bet you enjoyed watching the game :)
UK:
Swine flu jab ‘is safe in pregnancy’
Peter Walker and agencies
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 October 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/13/swine-flu-vaccine-safe
Health agency dispels myths about H1N1
October 13, 2009
By Tribune Staff
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20091013/LIFESTYLE/910130308
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