Gail Alexan­der

A 61-year-old man died at the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Health Fa­cil­i­ty yes­ter­day, mak­ing him the sixth vic­tim of the H1N1 virus, since the first re­port­ed death last year.Je­w­an Ma­haraj died af­ter spend­ing 18 days in the In­ten­sive Care Unit of the fa­cil­i­ty, due to com­pli­ca­tions from a com­bi­na­tion of hy­per­ten­sion and the H1N1 in­fluen­za, al­so known as swine flu.

The Health Min­istry re­port­ed Ma­haraj's death in a re­lease yes­ter­day and re­mind­ed cit­i­zens to be­gin tak­ing pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures.

"At this time, we take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind cit­i­zens that in­fluen­za can cause se­vere ill­ness in some per­sons, in­clud­ing the el­der­ly, in­fants, young chil­dren and preg­nant women as well as those with chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions, such as heart, lung, kid­ney dis­ease, hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes," it added.

The re­lease said the virus could be spread when an in­fect­ed per­son coughed or sneezed and droplets con­tain­ing virus­es get in­to the air and were in­haled by peo­ple near­by. "Peo­ple can al­so be­come in­fect­ed by touch­ing sur­faces con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with flu virus­es and then touch­ing their eyes, mouth or nose," the re­lease said.

It urged the pub­lic to pre­vent the spread of in­fec­tious dis­eases, like in­fluen­za, by cov­er­ing their mouth and nose with a tis­sue when cough­ing or sneez­ing.

It al­so ad­vised cit­i­zens to wash hands with soap and wa­ter reg­u­lar­ly, avoid close con­tact with peo­ple who have flu-like symp­toms and seek im­me­di­ate med­ical at­ten­tion if they had dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, chest tight­ness, the in­abil­i­ty to eat or drink, per­sis­tent vom­it­ing, or con­fu­sion.

The min­istry said safe and ef­fec­tive vac­cines that could pre­vent in­fluen­za or re­duce the sever­i­ty of ill­ness were avail­able at lo­cal health cen­tres and cit­i­zens seek­ing those were asked to con­tact their lo­cal health cen­tre or Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to set an ap­point­ment.

"Vac­ci­na­tion is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for peo­ple at high­er risk of se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions of in­fluen­za and for peo­ple who live with or care for high risk in­di­vid­u­als.

"Af­ter vac­ci­na­tion, per­sons still ought to take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to re­duce the spread of virus­es," it added.

More vac­ci­ne­savail­able, says­Deyals­ingh

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said cit­i­zens could go to health cen­tres to ob­tain free H1N1 vac­cine since T&T now had more vac­cines than last year.Re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, he said the min­istry had ob­tained 40,000 vac­cines where there were on­ly 10,000 last year.

He said there were now six H1N1 deaths, lat­est be­ing a 61-year-old man who was in the "at risk" cat­e­go­ry and was over­weight and hy­per­ten­sive.

Deyals­ingh said deaths due to vi­ral pneu­mo­nia were re­al­ly due to H1N1. H1N1 test­ing took one to two weeks and if a pa­tient was sus­pect­ed of hav­ing it, they should start on Tam­i­flu and en­sure friends and rel­a­tives were vac­ci­nat­ed, he added.

Deyals­ingh was un­able to say if Gov­ern­ment planned to build a health cen­tre at Table­land. He said a re­view to de­ter­mine health cen­tre needs in T&T would be com­plet­ed in the next three months.