VietNamNet Bridge – An 11-month old
girl from the central province
of Quang Tri died from
suspected meningitis on January 20. If confirmed, it will be the first case in Vietnam in
2012.
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Photo: Nguoi Lao Dong
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The information
was released by the Ministry of Health’s Department for Preventative Health
that quotes information from the Nha trang Pasteur Institute.
Nguoi Lao Dong
reported that the child started to show symptoms on January 19 with scarlet
fever and was administered antipyretics.
She was later
hospitalized at a local hospital in Quang Tri province before being transferred
to the Hue Central
Hospital in Hue City
on January 20.
She died the
same day. Initial tests show she could have died from meningitis.
Symptoms of
meningitis include sore throat, high fever, headache, bellyache and rashes all
over the body.
The disease is
considered dangerous as the onset of symptoms is sudden and death can follow
within hours.
Meanwhile, city
officials in Ho Chi Minh City
had earlier issued a warning about the possible spread of meningitis after
workers return to the city from their week-long Tet holiday in their hometowns.
Besides several
patients in Districts 7 and 9, the city
Hospital of Tropical
Diseases has reported that a 14-month-old boy from Binh Chanh District has
meningitis, and that others in the community had contracted the disease.
According to
Dr. Tran Phu Manh Sieu, head of the HCM City Preventive Medicine Department,
after the first epidemic cluster was found in Furukawa Company in District 7,
the health agency found one person at a high school in District 9 with the
disease.
The Ho Chi Minh
City Pasteur Institute tested 51 people who had access to the patient, and of
that number, 36 tested positive with the bacterium Neisseria meningitis,
reported VNS.
Dr. Sieu said
the possibility of contagion was high during Tet as people were travelling to
and from their hometowns.
In other health
news, an 18-year-old man who tended ducks in Can Tho City died of H5N1 flu
after having coughs and high temperatures, becoming the first person to die of
the avian flu this year.
Danh Ni died on
January 16 at the Kien Giang
General Hospital
in his hometown.
VietNamNet/Tuoi
Tre