Via the Budapest Times: Flu-stricken doctor on life support. Excerpt:
A doctor in southern Hungary was on a ventilator in a Szeged hospital last week after contracting swine flu.
The woman, who worked shifts at a hospital in nearby Makó, had not received an influenza inoculation, the news website Délmagyarorszag.hu reported last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the winter flu continued to tighten its grip on the nation. In the week to last Wednesday, 34,000 people presented at their local GP’s surgeries exhibiting the symptoms of influenza.
Recent figures from the Health Ministry suggest that roughly one in three of those with flu symptoms had contracted the new A(H1N1) viral strain known as swine flu.
Meanwhile, visiting bans were imposed at more hospitals across the country as influenza spread. Last Tuesday alone, all hospitals in Szeged and Pécs were closed to visitors in a bid to protect high risk patients.
“Many more people would have got the anti-flu vaccine if certain figures in the medical and political communities had not launched a counter-campaign,” Health Minister Tamás Székely told the right-wing daily Magyar Nemzet last week.
The opposition has repeatedly blamed the government for failing to ensure widespread inoculation despite Hungary being among the first countries to develop a vaccine to the new virus.
