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20 H1N1 deaths in 8 days: Maha on high alert again

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  • 20 H1N1 deaths in 8 days: Maha on high alert again

    India News: With swine flu claiming 20 lives in the last eight days in Maharashtra, the state government health machinery is once again on high alert.


    20 H1N1 deaths in 8 days: Maha on high alert again
    Sanjeev Shivadekar, TNN 12 September 2009, 03:49am IST
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    MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: With swine flu claiming 20 lives in the last eight days in Maharashtra, the state government health machinery is once again on
    high alert. Additional chief secretary (health) Sharwaree Gokhale admitted at a press conference on Friday that the situation was ??grim??.

    In Delhi, a 38-year-old woman succumbed to the flu on Friday. With this, the flu toll in the national capital rose to six. ??The patient who passed away this morning had tested positive for swine flu virus,?? N K Chaturvedi, medical superintendent, RML Hospital said. Maharashtra officials attributed the sudden spurt in deaths to a change in weather as well as the intermingling of huge crowds at the Ganpati festival, a fear which the state government had expressed weeks ago.

    On September 3, the number of deaths in the state was 57, but after the Ganpati immersion, 20 more people succumbed, taking the total death toll to 77 on Friday. The majority of deaths are in the urban areas of Pune and Mumbai. ??Our fear has come true,?? Gokhale said.

    Even as Mumbai?s swine flu toll touched 18 on Friday with a Bhiwandi resident, Fatima Momin, becoming the latest victim, 106 people were admitted in a single day, Thursday, to isolation facilities across the state. Momin, who had a history of diabetes and hypertension, was admitted to three hospitals before she was brought on Tuesday to civic-run Nair Hospital where she died.

    There was some confusion over another death that took place in civic-run Kasturba Hospital on Thursday. Gokhale told reporters on Friday that ??there was one death in Kasturba Hospital reported on Thursday but it has not been included in the state toll yet as we are still awaiting the diagnostic report.??

    However, civic officials told TOI that the patient had died of dengue haemorrhagic fever
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