4 swine flu deaths in Delhi in July, 241 cases in NCR

swine flu (H1N1) related deaths were reported from two government hospitals in Delhi in the month of July.

Three deaths were reported at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia hospital. Two men, 25 and 39 years old, succumbed to the disease. They had come to the city for treatment from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The third death was in a 45-year-old woman from Delhi.

The fourth death was reported by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The 62-year-old man was referred to AIIMS from a private hospital in Faridabad in a critical condition with respiratory failure and pneumonia. He was kept on extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a machine to imitate the functions of a human lung. He died on July 13.

According to the latest report by the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), four deaths were reported from Delhi and neighbouring areas till July 9. In the same period 241 cases of H1N1 were reported from the national capital region.

But according to the data released by the state health department, till July 16, Delhi and NCR have had 320 cases.

This is much higher than the number of dengue (109) or chikungunya (161) cases that had been reported till July 8 by the municipal corporation.

Last year, 196 cases of H1N1 and seven deaths had been reported from Delhi-NCR, according to IDSP data.

H1N1 is a human respiratory flu, which is commonly known as swine flu. It was declared as a pandemic in 2009 by the World Health Organisation. Since then, Delhi and most of the country has been reporting swine flu cases, which is common during the winters.

H1N1 has all the signs of a conventional flu – fever, cough, sore throat, headache, runny or stuffy nose, fatigue and body ache – but, it also causes respiratory illness and pneumonia.