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Turkey starts vaccination as H1N1 death toll rises to 10
The Health Ministry announced yesterday that after the swine flu death of a 27-year-old man, D.İ., who worked as a custodian at an Ankara hospital on Sunday, a 22-month-old toddler, Duygu G., and a 14-year old boy, Burak K., who both died at a hospital in the Central Anatolian province of Konya on Saturday, were also discovered to have contracted swine flu.
The ministry announced that a 4-year-old girl in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa died of swine flu on Monday, bringing the death toll from swine flu in Turkey to seven. Burak K. and Duygu G. were hospitalized at Selçuk University Meram Medical Faculty Hospital with high fevers on Saturday. Both died a few hours after they were admitted. Tissue samples taken from them were sent to the Refik Saydam Public Health Center in Ankara, and the Health Ministry later announced that the samples tested positive for swine flu.
Meram Medical Faculty Hospital’s chief physician, Dr. Yahya Paksoy, said Burak K.and Duygu G. were both included in high-risk groups as determined by the Health Ministry as Burak K. was reportedly a leukemia patient and suffered from cerebral palsy and Duygu G. was below the age of 2.
The total number of swine flu cases in Turkey since it was first discovered in the country in May is estimated to have exceeded 1,800, Health Minister Recep Akdağ announced. “However, I should note that this figure comprises only registered cases. We estimate that swine flu cases are much higher than this figure,” he told the Anatolia news agency on Monday. Noting that instead of counting those who had died due to swine flu, people should focus on ways of preventing an epidemic, Akdağ called on members of high-risk groups, in particular, to get the swine flu vaccine. “The citizen who died in Ankara last week also worked at a hospital. You see that two of the [seven] fatal cases have been seen in hospital workers. We see how necessary it is to start inoculating our health workers. I call for all those working at hospitals to be vaccinated and protect both themselves and their families,” he said.
Nearly 350,000 health personnel and pilgrims embarking on hajj began receiving shots yesterday throughout Turkey. The first shipment of 500,000 doses of swine flu vaccine arrived in Turkey last week. Samples of the vaccine were tested at the Refik Saydam Public Health Center, Turkey’s national public health research laboratory, and then distributed to health institutions across the country. The center announced that no problems were detected with random samples of the vaccine they had evaluated.
The first person to be vaccinated was Ankara Provincial Health Director Mustafa Aksoy, who received shot at the Ankara Numune Research and Training Hospital. Health Minister Akdağ is expected to receive a shot on Tuesday.
The Health Ministry has prepared a scheme to identify high-risk groups and take precautionary measures against the epidemic. The Health Ministry classified the morbidly obese, pregnant women, those below the age of 2 and those with chronic heart and lung diseases as high-risk groups.
According to the ministry, people with at least one symptom of swine flu, such as a high fever, sore throat, headache, nasal flow, coughing, difficulty breathing, vomiting and diarrhea will be treated as “possible cases.” If those included in groups mentioned above have these symptoms, they will be designated as part of the “high-risk group for fatal disease.”
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