?As­tra Da Cos­ta, the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the ad­ver­tis­ing/ pub­lic re­la­tions agency All Me­dia Projects Lim­it­ed (Am­ple), died Thurs­day of bron­cho-pneu­mo­nia, pul­monary fi­bro­sis and a pul­monary ab­scess, ac­cord­ing to a close friend yes­ter­day who had seen the death cer­tifi­cate, which was signed by pathol­o­gist Dr Hughvon des Vi­gnes.

But ques­tions re­main about whether, or the ex­tent to which, the swine flu virus con­tributed to the pass­ing of Da Cos­ta, who was the Ro­tary Dis­trict Gov­er­nor for the re­gion as well as chair­man of Queen's Hall. Sources close to the Da Cos­ta fam­i­ly, speak­ing on the ba­sis of strict anonymi­ty be­cause of the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the is­sue, said she ad­mit­ted her­self to the West­shore Hos­pi­tal in Co­corite on Sep­tem­ber 27 af­ter she re­turned from a Ro­tary trip to St Lu­cia. A biop­sy, from which a sam­ple was tak­en on Oc­to­ber 3, was de­liv­ered to Carec (Caribbean Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Cen­tre) in Fed­er­a­tion Park on Oc­to­ber 5. "The doc­tors in­formed the fam­i­ly Wednes­day, Oc­to­ber 14, that Carec had made a pos­i­tive di­ag­no­sis of the pres­ence of the H1N1 virus (swine flu)," said Al­fred Agui­ton, who co-found­ed Am­ple with Da Cos­ta in 1974.

Agui­ton de­clined to be drawn in­to dis­cus­sion on the nine-day gap be­tween Carec re­ceiv­ing the swine flu sam­ple and the doc­tors in­form­ing the fam­i­ly that the test was pos­i­tive. He al­so re­fused to spec­u­late as to whether the de­lay meant that the re­sults were com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Da Cos­ta's doc­tors ear­li­er and not passed on to her fam­i­ly be­fore Wednes­day. He al­so de­clined to spec­u­late if an ear­li­er di­ag­no­sis of swine flu might have af­fect­ed her treat­ment. Asked whether swine flu con­tributed to her pass­ing, Agui­ton said: "The doc­tors would be the best ones to in­di­cate the role that the virus may have played in As­tra's de­cline." She was trans­ferred from pri­vate­ly-owned West­shore to the Post-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal short­ly af­ter 3pm on Thurs­day where she was placed on the iso­la­tion ward of the In­ten­sive Care Unit. Ques­tioned on why she was trans­ferred to the state-run hos­pi­tal if she was crit­i­cal­ly ill, an em­ploy­ee of West­shore Med­ical re­ferred the Guardian to the Min­istry of Health's pol­i­cy on the treat­ment of the swine flu virus. An of­fi­cial of the Min­istry of Health de­nied that the cur­rent pol­i­cy for the treat­ment of the H1N1 virus was that pa­tients should be trans­ferred to state-run gen­er­al hos­pi­tals.

Speak­ing about Am­ple's fu­ture, Agui­ton said he will as­sume some re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for the man­age­ment of the com­pa­ny. "There will be some shift­ing in per­son­nel and where nec­es­sary we will in­tro­duce ap­pro­pri­ate re­sources," said Agui­ton. "We are ful­ly com­mit­ted to, and con­fi­dent about, main­tain­ing the same high stan­dards which were in place dur­ing the pe­ri­od that Ms Da Cos­ta spear­head­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion," said Agui­ton. Da Cos­ta took over as Am­ple's ex­ec­u­tive chair­man in 2005, but ran the agency from 2001 dur­ing the time that Agui­ton was on spe­cial as­sign­ment to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Am­ple was es­tab­lished in June 1974 af­ter Agui­ton and Da Cos­ta were ter­mi­nat­ed from Ra­dio Trinidad, then owned by the Red­i­fus­sion group, who bowed to pres­sure from a trade union group that ob­ject­ed to Agui­ton and Da Cos­ta be­ing hired from state-owned NBS Ra­dio 610. Agui­ton said: "There will be full con­sid­er­a­tion of, and in­volve­ment by, the fam­i­ly of Ms Da Cos­ta and any­one ap­point­ed as her heirs and suc­ces­sors. "Fam­i­ly mem­bers have al­ways con­tributed ful­some­ly, and will con­tin­ue to keep the Da Cos­ta name and pres­ence at the fore­front of our un­der­tak­ings."

?swine flu tips

?You're at high­er risk if...

High risk cat­e­gories in­clude preg­nant women and peo­ple with cer­tain chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions like heart dis­ease, di­a­betes and asth­ma and oth­er lung con­di­tions, sick­le cell anaemia, obe­si­ty, HIV/AIDS and any oth­er con­di­tion af­fect­ing the im­mune sys­tem.

Seek im­me­di­ate med­ical as­sis­tance if...

�2 Dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing or short­ness of breath

�2 Pain or pres­sure in the chest or ab­domen

�2 Sud­den dizzi­ness

�2 Se­vere or per­sis­tent vom­it­ing