Update 7/15: Australia 2009-H1N1 Status

Swine flu death toll reaches 29, with 11,194 confirmed cases

FIVE more deaths in Sydney - including a nine-year-old boy and a 78-year-old man - have raised the national death toll of victims with swine flu to 29.
The other three were two women aged 55 and 71, and a 29-year-old man.

New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant said four of the latest victims had underlying medical conditions. What caused the death of the fifth, the man in his 20s, had yet to be determined.

"The (nine-year-old) child had a number of very significant underlying medical conditions," Dr Chant said.

"The child presented to the hospital with influenza, the child was not (previously) hospitalised. But the child had a number of very significant pre-existing conditions."

The five deaths - four of them over the past three days - have doubled the state's toll to 10, the second highest in the country.

Twelve have so far been reported in Victoria, two each in the Northern Territory and South Australia, and one each in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia.

A middle-aged indigenous man with swine flu died in an Alice Springs Hospital on Sunday, the federal Department of Health and Ageing said. It said the Northern Territory Department of Health and Family Services had confirmed the dead man had a number of serious medical conditions.

Swine flu has emerged as the dominant flu in Australia this winter with 11,194 confirmed cases, and currently 74 people are in intensive care across the country.

Pregnant women have been urged to waste no time contacting their GP if they develop flu-like symptoms, after several western Sydney mothers-to-be with the virus had to be treated in intensive care.

Media reports today said six Sydney women were being cared for at Westmead, Nepean and Blacktown hospitals. That number has been amended to four, three of whom had given birth, NSW Health said.

Leading Westmead Hospital gynaecologist Brian Trudinger said he was confident all would recover.

"Are they going to die? No, they are not going to die, I hope," the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology said.

"They should recover, but they need a lot of support."

Professor Trudinger urged mums to see their GP immediately if they experienced any flu-like symptoms, and if possible, avoid public places where they might pick up the virus. He said it was unusual to have women admitted into ICU with influenza. It was also a worrying trend, with six weeks of winter remaining and a vaccine still not available.

"If I was pregnant, I think I'd be interacting with crowds as little as possible," he said.

"If that is quarantining yourself at home, I think that is a good thing.

"The worst thing you could do is go into a crowded shopping centre, or something like that, because you would be very much more prone to coming into contact with people who carry the virus."

Pregnant women were particularly susceptible to the swine flu virus, though not all would require emergency treatment, he said.

Leading virologist Bill Rawlinson said the virus was a risk to both the mother and baby.

"We do know that influenza not only has an effect on the mother, there's a high risk of complications and a high risk of death," he said.

"It can also affect the foetus, the unborn baby. We know that the very high temperatures that go with influenza can cause problems in the baby.

"Routine influenza vaccinations are important."

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