A nine-month old Kuwaiti infant suffering from heart infection and developmental delays died on Wednesday after being infected with the A/H1N1 swine flu virus, bringing the toll up to eight, the Health Ministry announced Wednesday. The deceased baby, who was taken to a number of hospitals, was admitted on Tuesday in critical condition and was placed in the intensive care unit and given the antiviral drugs but was too weak to fight the disease. Most of the swine flu deaths in Kuwait have been those of patients suffering from other illness. Most of the people infected with the disease have recovered. The recovery percentage in Kuwait 99 percent.

The children under five years, pregnant women and ill people suffering from diabetes, asthma and weak immune system are greatly susceptible to the disease. Reports about referring cadets from Saad Al-Abdullah Academy to the Infectious Diseases Hospital are false, Interior Ministry said on Wednesday. The ministry said in a statement that the academy conducted a swine flu test on the cadets to make sure they were not infected with the flu. No swine flu infections were reported during the test, said the Interior Ministry.

Infections
Many people who have died of swine flu infections in the United States have also had bacterial infections, health officials reported on Wednesday. A study of 77 patients who died of the new pandemic H1N1 virus showed 29 percent of them had so-called bacterial co-infections, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. About half of these had Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can be prevented with a vaccine, the CDC said. The CDC has already reported that H1N1, declared a pandemic in June, has become more active as weather cools and schools return from summer breaks. Cases are reported in all 50 states. “Our influenza season is off to a fast start and unfortunately there will be more cases of bacterial infections in people suffering from influenza,” CDC epidemiologist Dr Matthew Moore said in a statement.

“It’s really important for people, especially those at high risk for the serious complications from influenza, to check with their provider when they get their influenza vaccine about being vaccinated against pneumococcus.” Wyeth’s Prevnar is part of the routine series of immunizations that children should get, and another vaccine against so-called pneumococcal bacteria is available for elderly adults.  The CDC team noted that at first it did not appear that people who were seriously ill with swine flu or who died of it had secondary infections. But doctors may have missed them, the CDC said.  “Routine clinical tests used to identify bacterial infections among patients with pneumonia do not detect many of these infections,” the CDC team reported.

Arabtimes