Kali­fa Clyne

More than two weeks af­ter be­ing ad­mit­ted to the Er­ic Williams Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope for pains re­lat­ed to her preg­nan­cy, 28-year-old Sta­cy Ramkissoon has died.Ramkissoon had con­tract­ed the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, but the cause of her death hasn't yet been de­ter­mined. An au­top­sy is sched­uled for lat­er to­day.

Ramkissoon's rel­a­tives re­ceived news of her death on Sat­ur­day night, in the hos­pi­tal's In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU).Fam­i­ly mem­bers sus­pect swine flu, but Med­ical Chief of Staff of the North Cen­tral re­gion­al Au­thor­i­ty Dr Andy Bhag­wan­dass said the hos­pi­tal would await the post-mortem re­port be­fore mak­ing any state­ment.

"We don't have the con­firmed cause of death. It is known that she had H1N1 but there were oth­er is­sues so we have to wait on the re­port," Bhag­wan­dass said.

The young woman had de­liv­ered her ba­by via a Cae­sare­an sec­tion.The ba­by died one day af­ter de­liv­ery.In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Ramkissoon's fa­ther Kelvin said his daugh­ter, who lived on Mo­hammed Street in Tu­na­puna, went to the hos­pi­tal ear­ly this month af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pain.

"She didn't seem to have any flu-like symp­toms when she went in but they kept her for ob­ser­va­tion. Then they told us pneu­mo­nia, af­ter that they said tu­ber­cu­lo­sis and then fi­nal­ly H1N1," Kelvin said.

He said his daugh­ter, who would have been 29 on Jan­u­ary 25, was re­spon­sive short­ly af­ter go­ing to hos­pi­tal but took a turn for the worse and was moved to the ICU.

"I would go and see her but then I got sick and well I couldn't go in­to the ICU. I test­ed pos­i­tive for dengue," Kelvin said.

He said hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials had giv­en the vac­cine for the virus to rel­a­tives.

Ramkissoon praised the doc­tors at the hos­pi­tal, say­ing he knew they had done all they could.

"The doc­tors re­al­ly worked, They re­al­ly tried their best. They were talk­ing to us and giv­ing us in­for­ma­tion but it seemed like what­ev­er was wrong was too much for them."

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh, in a press con­fer­ence on Fri­day, said three peo­ple had died as a re­sult of the H1N1 virus in 2015.He said their had been a to­tal of 29 lab-con­firmed cas­es so far.

Deyals­ingh told me­dia there was enough vac­cine shots and Tam­i­flu dos­es for the at-risk pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad.Chil­dren, the el­der­ly, hos­pi­tal work­ers and preg­nant women are con­sid­ered to be at-risk.