Ammon News - AMMAN A third H1N1 patient died in Jordan on Sunday as swine flu infections in the Kingdom rose to 107, health minister Abdullatif Wreikat said.

A statement issued by the Ministry of Health on Sunday said that the 27-year old man's was reported by the King Abdullah I University Hospital near the northern city of Irbid and two new H1N1 cases were also detected at the Al Hussein cancer Center in Amman.

Two other deaths were reported in the country in the past weeks.

But Bashir Khasawneh, the pulmonologist who was following up on the case at King Abdullah I Hospital said that H1N1 was the sole cause of death, according to a report by the Jordan Times reporter Khetam Malkawi.

The first two reported H1N1 fatalities this year were in patients who also suffered from other illnesses.

Khasawneh noted that the patient was admitted to the hospital last Wednesday, already in critical condition.

“Although he had gone to Princess Basma Hospital a few days before coming here, he was not admitted and they did not conduct the required medical tests to diagnose H1N1,” Khasawneh said.

The physician added that this was not the first death in Jordan that resulted from H1N1 alone.

Responding to claims by a source at the Health Ministry that the patient had not received the necessary medication, Khasawneh countered that he was given the antiviral drug Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), but this medicine is only effective against the flu in the first two days after infection.

“We gave him Tamiflu as we do with any H1N1 patient, but he should have been hospitalised earlier,” he said.

In previous statements, the ministry said that all H1N1-related deaths in Jordan had occurred among patients in high-risk groups such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, and those with respiratory diseases.

However, Wael Hayajneh, a member of the National Flu Committee, told The Jordan Times that even young, healthy people like the patient in Irbid can die of H1N1 flu if not treated promptly.

He agreed with Khasawneh that the patient should have been hospitalised before his illness became severe.

Since the beginning of the winter, 107 patients have been diagnosed with the disease, according to the ministry’s statement.

The H1N1 virus first emerged in Jordan in June 2009 with 3,049 cases and 16 related fatalities registered in the country that year.
The strain re-emerged in December 2010, causing 289 illnesses and 17 related deaths.

Minister of Health Abdullatif Wreikat had announced earlier in the month that the cases of seasonal flu, including Swine Flu, remain in their average levels for this time of year.

Wreikat said H1N1 has become a seasonal flu, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, which he said needed not be reported. But he said the ministry monitors those cases and "transparently" reports them to the public.

A woman in her forties died at an Amman hospital earlier this month, becoming the second victim of an outbreak of H1N1 virus in the kingdom, after a man in his twenties died on January 6 of multiple congenital disorders after he was infected with the fatal virus.

Wreikat said that H1N1 is a seasonal flu but assured that vaccines and necessary medicines are available for treatment, calling on the public to immediately report to medical centres or hospitals in case of any signs of severe flu.

He said early detection of the virus would prevent complications.

The minister urged citizens to take care of severe flu affecting especially patients with heart and lung diseases, the most vulnerable to the H1N1 epidemic.