Hospital in Bandung treats more patients suspected of having bird flu

[Harriet]

BANDUNG (Antara): Hasan Sadikin Hospital in the West Java capital of Bandung is now treating three patients suspected of having contracted bird flu, after another villager of Cikelet in Garut regency was admitted to the hospital late Friday.

Two patients, who are also from Cikelet village, were admitted to the hospital Wednesday and Thursday.

"The latest patient, who is 14 weeks pregnant, was admitted to the hospital at 7:30 p.m. Friday," hospital president director Hadi Yusuf was quoted by Antara news agency as saying Saturday.

He said that the house of the latest patient was close to another bird flu patient who died recently.

A woman died Thursday night - three hours after being admitted to a hospital in Garut. The hospital is awaiting laboratory test results to see if she had contracted the virus.

Cikelet is a village, some 150 kilometers southeast of Jakarta, where at least one person died of the disease and another fell ill. Four other people died before tests could be taken to see if they had bird flu.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 140 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 - 46 of them in Indonesia, the world's worst affected country, according to the World Health Organization. (**)

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[Corn]

Re: Hospital in Bandung treats more patients suspected of having bird flu

Snip from above> "The latest patient, who is 14 weeks pregnant, was admitted to the hospital at 7:30 p.m. Friday," hospital president director Hadi Yusuf was quoted by Antara news agency as saying Saturday.
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From what I understand H5N1 has been more so lethal in women with child. Probably due to boosted immune system and cyclonic storm.....sad news if she is positive. Let's hope not.

[Sharpe]

Re: Hospital in Bandung treats more patients suspected of having bird flu

Snip from above> "The latest patient, who is 14 weeks pregnant, was admitted to the hospital at 7:30 p.m. Friday," hospital president director Hadi Yusuf was quoted by Antara news agency as saying Saturday.
****
From what I understand H5N1 has been more so lethal in women with child. Probably due to boosted immune system and cyclonic storm.....sad news if she is positive. Let's hope not.

Actually, that is not all accurate. Pregnant women have suppressed immune systems--because they have to allow a foreign body (their baby) to grow in them without immunologically attacking it. The reason why they likely have much higher lethality rates is actually probably because the virus has almost unlimited ability to multiply in the baby and then spills over into the mother at high levels. Just the same way that H5N1 almost always kills ducks, swans, geese, chickens less than 1 year old, it does the same in fetuses, with the only difference being that fetuses aren't even out of the mother yet. We will likely find, after all is said and done that the number of pregnant women who have died in countries like China and Indonesia over the last few years has risen greatly over previous years. This was noticed in New York City in 1918 too.

[colormyquilt]

Re: Hospital in Bandung treats more patients suspected of having bird flu

This would be the first reported suspected patient who is pregnant that I remember.
This is not a good thing.
I am wondering about the testing on a pregnant woman. Would it be assumed, should she test positive, that fetus also test positive? Would testing be separate?