Re: Madison Heights, Michigan: 15 Police Officers "call in sick"- 4 June 2009
Source:
http://www.freep.com/article/20090612/NEWS03/90612024
Madison Heights cop may have died from H1N1 flu
By Gina Damron ? Free Press Staff Writer ? June 12, 2009
A Madison Heights police officer ? one of about a dozen sickened last month ? has died and now the Michigan Department of Community Health is investigating whether the mystery illness was Legionnaires? disease or the H1N1 virus, also called swine flu.
?What needs to be done is finding out what it was that this police officer died from and then take any type of actions from those results,? said James McCurtis, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Community Health.
The officer?s name has not been released, but McCurtis said he believes he died Thursday night.
The Madison Heights Police Department plans to hold a news conference today at 4 p.m.
McCurtis said the state department likely found out about the possibility of Legionnaires? disease from either the Oakland County Department of Health and Human Services Division or the officer?s doctors at the University of Michigan Medical Center, where he was hospitalized after getting sick.
The county health department is working with the state and police department as well, McCurtis said.
The illness sickened officers during a nine-day period in May, Madison Heights Mayor Ed Swanson told the Free Press last week. He said the city had hired a cleaning company to disinfect the department, including furniture, computer keyboards, phones and doorknobs.