Russia - Meningitis Suspected in Children's Deaths

[sharon sanders]

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meningitis virus
June 7, 2008, 23:37 Doctors say Siberian virus deaths not linked

Doctors believe that the deaths of two children killed by a mystery virus in Siberia are not linked. The infants, who both died in the last fortnight, were friends from the same nursery in Abakan in the Republic of Khakassia. It was previously feared that the children had become infected with an aggressive enterovirus, which can lead to meningitis. But doctors now say that they believe the cause of death was different in both cases.

Two year old Victoria Plotnikova died from suspected meningitis at the beginning of the month.

Five days earlier, Victoria's best friend, Vladimir Panov, died after being given a similar diagnosis.

39 children from the same nursery were also taken to hospital with infections. Nine of them have now been discharged.

The full results of their analysis will not be known for two more weeks but doctors say their condition is satisfactory. The nursery has been quarantined until June 19.

Charges of negligence could be brought against the nursery?s director. Svetlana Pavina from the investigation committee said: ?Criminal charges are being considered against the nursery staff and the doctors in the hospital, because no action was taken to prevent the deaths and to stop the infection.?

Another investigator, Galina Martynova, said: ?These two are absolutely independent cases as for the others, none of them is infected and they'll be dismissed from the hospital and be sent back home shortly.?

However, doctors warn that the enterovirus, the most common cause of meningitis and which spreads through close contact, may flare up again - just like it did two years ago. Back then a hundred people picked up a serious infection by a lake.

http://www.russiatoday.ru/news/news/25930

[Shiloh]

Re: Russia - Meningitis Suspected in Children's Deaths

Source: http://mnweekly.ru/news/20080610/55333119.html

10/06/2008 |
Meningitis Outbreak Kills Two in Siberia

Medical officials have called an enterovirus scare in south Siberia's Hakasiya region a false alarm after tests came in showing evidence that the deaths of a boy and a girl from the Yelochka kindergarten in the town of Abakan were from unrelated causes. Meanwhile, 39 children from the same facility remain hospitalized with a virus-like respiratory illness and intestinal infection.

"According to preliminary results from lab tests, two cases of child deaths in the Yelochka kindergarten are unrelated," RIA Novosti quoted a representative of the regional Rospotrebnadzor - the state agency that oversees control of consumer and health affairs - as saying.

Doctors had feared that the deaths of a two year old girl and a three year old boy were caused by enterovirus-71, a virulent strain of the pathogen which has already infected nearly 30,000 people in China, causing 30 deaths among children. But now epidemologists are assuring the population that the strain has not entered Russia.

Nevertheless, prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation against kindergarten headmistress Yulia Shmidt, who could face negligence charges on allegations that she failed to report the meningitis-like symptoms of the two children to other parents and health officials.

According to parents quoted in the Izvestia daily, by the time she warned them to check their children, Volodya was already in a coma.

Volodya Panov, 3, came down with a flu-like illness on May 23, and died June 3, after falling into a coma.

His friend from the kindergarten, two-year-old Vika Plotnikova fell ill May 31 with similar symptoms and died the next day.

It was initially suspected that the illness was caused by an enterovirus, which often results in meningitis. Fearing the worst, medical officials began checking for similar infections across the entire region.

Russia's Chief Sanitary Doctor Gennady Onishchenko personally visited the rest of the hospitalized children along with a whole brigade of clinical specialists who he said worked with enterovirus cases.

Initially he said that they were not sure whether the deaths were caused by meningitis or en*terovirus, but warned that even if an enterovirus was detected as the cause, it could not be the same strain as the one in China, NTV reported late last week.

By Saturday, however, the initial diagnosis was confirmed, he told RIA Novosti. Volodya had died from bacterial meningo-encephalitis, while Vika died from toxic shock caused by fast-progressing bacterial meningitis.

Onishchenko called their deaths a "tragic coincidence," Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted him as saying.

But the illnesses of the 39 other children have a simple explanation: "They all went to kindergarten in February, and had stayed home their entire lives before that," the paper quoted a clinical doctor who visited the children in Abakan as saying. "They came face to face with the outside world and started getting sick. It is a normal occurrence among children who enter kindergarten."

Last summer, about 100 people were infected with a strain of enterovirus they picked after swimming in a Khakasia lake.

By Anna Arutunyan

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: Russia - Meningitis Suspected in Children's Deaths

Nearly all children hospitalized with enterovirus in Khakassia released from hospital

6/10/2008

34 children of "Yelochka" kindergarten, where two children had died from an infectious disease, were released from Abakan Infectious Hospital on June 10, the Khakass Department of the federal regulatory healthcare and civil rights protection inspectorate Rospotrebnadzor reported.

34 children have been released from Abakan Infectious Hospital for three days. The state of ten children remaining in hospital is out of danger.

Primary care physicians keep watching the children at home. No new cases of the disease have been registered.

As Newslab reported earlier, two children from Abakan kindergarten "Yelochka" died on May 31 and June 3. Both the death cases in one and the same kindergarten were not interconnected.

The cause of the death of a 2-year-old girl was a generalized form of meningococcus, while the other child died of purulent encephalomeningitis, supposedly caused by Haemophilus influenzae.

Nearly 40 children from "Yelochka" kindergarten were taken to hospital. It had been reported before that the children had had enterovirus.

A criminal case was opened on "Neglect" against Yulia Shmidt, the kindergarten director, who faces up to five years' imprisonment.

http://english.newslab.ru/news/267390