Victorians warned of flu deaths

Press, 19 July 1988, Page 34

Victorians warned of flu deaths

NZPA-AAP Melbourne Health authorities in Australia have warned Victorians to prepare for a winter outbreak of influenza after the recent deaths of a man and a woman from two different types of flu. The state’s chief health officer, Dr Graham Rouch, said two virus strains identified in Melbourne had been responsible for the deaths of a pregnant woman, aged 29, last Thursday, and a man, 58, last month. Both died in Fairfield’s Infectious Diseases Hospital — the man from a rare strain known as the New Zealand flu and the woman from a recurrence of last year’s flu strain.

The woman’s child was stillborn. Dr Rouch said that 13 cases of ordinary had

been reported to the Health Department but only the one case of New Zealand flu was known.

He said people should not be panicked by reports about the incidence of the new strain in Australia.

Although a vaccine to combat the strain would not be available in Victoria until next year, other vaccines could be effective in some cases.

“Whether an epidemic of flu will develop is hard to predict,” he said. “We advise ail people to keen uo with immunisation each year from about April and certainly by May. People most at risk already have a poor state of health.” The National Health and Medical Research Council recommended immunisation for people over 65 years old, those

receiving immuno-sup-pressive therapy, those people working in essential public utilities, medical and health fields, and those with chronic debilitating disease, especially cardiac, pulmonary and renal disorders.

Symptoms of flu were an abrupt onset of fever, sore throat and cough, headache, rather potent pain and tiredness. Dr Rouch said there were a number of other infections afflicting the general community at the present time. “While these infections do cause some incapacity, they do not seein to have the symptoms typically associated with influenza. “However, Victorians, particularly people in the metropolitan area, should for a sea-

sonal flu outbreak,”

Last month a girl, aged 12, from Kempsey on the New South Wales north coast died from a rare form of viral pneumonia which developed after she caught the flu. A boy, aged 22 months, died in Sydney from complications associated with the flu virus.