Trinidad: Pregnant mother of two dies from swine flu

The Trinidad & Tobago Ministry of Health previously confirmed that three people have died of the swine flu virus.
The Trinidad & Tobago Ministry of Health previously confirmed that three people have died of the swine flu virus.

(Trinidad Guardian) A preg­nant moth­er of two, who was placed in a med­ical­ly in­duced co­ma with swine flu com­pli­ca­tions has died.

Guardian Me­dia learned that the 38-year-old mom died on Thurs­day night at the Mt Hope Med­ical Com­plex.

This news­pa­per high­light­ed the case two weeks ago and spoke with her hus­band.

He was un­able to speak with the me­dia on Fri­day and yes­ter­day, on­ly say­ing he was “too stressed right now to talk”.

Guardian Me­dia learned that the woman was kept iso­lat­ed at the High-De­pen­den­cy Unit (HDU), and kept in a med­ical­ly in­duced co­ma to bet­ter deal with both her swine flu symp­toms and her ear­ly trimester preg­nan­cy.

She was 15 weeks preg­nant at the time of her death.

Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) con­firmed the death late Fri­day night in re­sponse to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia.

At first, the NCRHA was not aware of the woman’s death and de­nied that the woman had died.

Min­utes lat­er, they sent a short con­fir­ma­to­ry state­ment.

“Yes, I can con­firm that she passed away af­ter a valiant at­tempt by our staff to save her life in the HDU at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex. The Au­thor­i­ty is sad­dened by this loss and ex­press­es our con­do­lences to her fam­i­ly,” the NCRHA said.

On Jan­u­ary 12, Guardian Me­dia spoke with her hus­band as he vis­it­ed her in the hos­pi­tal.

At that time he was hope­ful of her re­cov­ery and said she was get­ting bet­ter.

It is un­clear what hap­pened in the days that fol­lowed but ac­cord­ing to fam­i­ly mem­bers she “took a turn for the worse.”

At that time, the hus­band and fa­ther said when his wife was di­ag­nosed with swine flu, the en­tire fam­i­ly was iso­lat­ed and test­ed, but she is the on­ly one who test­ed pos­i­tive.

He said then that the whole fam­i­ly fell apart emo­tion­al­ly when they first learn she had swine flu. His moth­er was so dev­as­tat­ed by the news, that she too was hos­pi­talised and lat­er died. The hus­band said they were not sure where his wife con­tract­ed the dis­ease as peo­ple near their Ari­ma home were test­ed af­ter she was di­ag­nosed, but no one else had swine flu. Two weeks ago the Min­istry of Health was on high alert af­ter three deaths from the dis­ease.

On Sat­ur­day, in a text ex­change about this spe­cif­ic case, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh warned this pub­li­ca­tion about cre­at­ing pan­ic but said noth­ing more.

Two weeks ago, he con­firmed that there were some 17 con­firmed cas­es in the coun­try and that the Min­istry had or­dered an­oth­er 25,000 vac­cines be­cause peo­ple were vis­it­ing health cen­tres to get their vac­ci­na­tion.