UAE swine flu total now 47 - all fully recovered

ABU DHABI // Twenty new patients who were diagnosed with swine flu made full recoveries and have been discharged from hospital, WAM, the state news agency, reported yesterday. On July 11, the Ministry of Health announced that all 27 people reported to have the virus in the UAE had recovered. The latest cases bring the total to 47, all of whom have recovered, health officials told the higher supervisory committee combating the H1N1 virus yesterday.

Swine flu is potentially lethal for the young and elderly, as well as those with weakened immune systems. At the meeting, presided over by the Minister of Health, Dr Hanif Hassan Ali, officials also reviewed the health awareness plan for the forthcoming haj and umrah to be launched in co-ordination with the General Authority for Islamic Affairs and Endowment and other similar campaigns aimed at schools, universities and colleges.

The committee instructed the health ministry to publish an update on the virus every Monday and to proceed with its health awareness plans. Newspapers in India, Libya and Syria have reported more swine flu cases involving people who had travelled through Dubai. Cases of the illness in Hyderabad reached 31, with eight new reports including a two-year-old boy who arrived from Dubai. Nineteen new cases were reported in India on Monday, bringing the number of H1N1-infected people to 212 so far.

Libya reported its first swine flu case on July 5, which involved a worker who arrived from Thailand via Dubai. The following day, Syria's first swine flu patient was a woman who had flown home from Australia via Dubai at the end of June. The Emirates' first swine flu patient was an academic from UAE University in Al Ain who had been on a visit to Canada. The man was treated at Al Ain's Tawam Hospital and discharged in May.

rruiz@thenational.ae