Neighbors of the deceased flu patient in District 10 wear medical masks.

Influenza A (H1N1) patients under treatment at the National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases in Hanoi can freely go out to buy a movie CD, to cafés or Internet shops.

The patient, who wished not to be named, recalled his friends told him that they just go out whenever they want and whoever was unlucky would catch the virus.

“If you want to go out of the hospital to buy cooking or anything, just put on normal clothes,” the patient told Sai Gon Tiep Thi newspaper last week.

Infected students and teachers of Lomonosov High School, the first school that reported H1N1 infection in Hanoi, are being treated at the institute in a room labeled “quarantined.” Yet family members of the patients had no problem staying for the night last Wednesday.

At other quarantined rooms, many patients do not wear medical masks or hospital pyjamas. Some of them on Friday went to meet patients in other rooms, and even on to the street like normal people.

A patient at the institute, who wished to be unnamed, said when he first tested positive with the H1N1 virus, local health officials had come constantly to sterilize the area and phoned throughout the day, asking him to stay away from others.

“It did sound serious. But now at the treatment place, the patients are managed so badly. They are never warned or reminded of anything.”

A female patient admitted she and other infected persons go out, sometimes to cafés, almost every night.

They would remove the patients’ gowns and put on normal clothes, go through the nearby section for dengue fever patients and out of the hospital.

Also, many patients with other diseases and their caregivers lie in the corridor just outside the “quarantined” rooms. They are not provided with medical masks and there’s no one to watch the place.

At a meeting in Hanoi Wednesday, Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Preventive Health and Environment Department under the Health Ministry, said people with chronic problems like diseases of heart, respiratory ailments or diabetes face higher risk of death once infected with the H1N1 virus, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Some windows of the quarantined rooms are open toward the nearby Bach Mai Hospital, which treats people with cancer.

At the examination section of the institute last Monday, flu suspects and their family members were sitting together on benches, corridors and anywhere that happened to have free space.

Nga told the Hanoi meeting that the flu death tally nationwide will increase if hospitals failed to properly treat the surging number of infections.

Professor Nguyen Thu Van, director of the Hanoi’s Vaccine and Bio -Technology Products No. 1 Company (VABIOTECH), said the production of H1N1 vaccine requires adequate clinical trials, which means the country will produce the first vaccines no sooner than late 2010.

VABIOTECH, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biology and Ho Chi Minh City’s Pasteur Institute are currently the only producers of bird flu vaccines in the country.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday said people don’t have to rush for medical masks as they only need to use the ordinary face masks and keep proper hygiene in order to protect themselves against the H1N1 virus.

The ministry confirmed 64 new cases of the virus, raising the country’s tally to 1,275, of whom 916 have recovered fully.

Two people have died of the flu so far – a 52-year-old woman with Down syndrome in HCMC on Monday and a 29-year-old woman in the central coastal Khanh Hoa Province a week earlier.

The European Center of Diseases Control and Prevention said Wednesday that flu has so far infected 215,900 people in 168 countries and territories, killing 1,735.

Neighbors panic over flu death

Neighbors of the dead patient in District 10, Ho Chi Minh City are now panicking as some of them had paid their respects as her body lay at home on Tuesday.

They had not known that she had contracted the H1N1 virus.

“We’re all worried now. When I paid my respects, I was just informed that she had pneumonia or something. No warning about H1N1,” said one of the neighbors of the flu patient who died at a local hospital on Monday.

“I only found out that she had tested positive for H1N1 later on the Internet and television.”

There’s a low risk of infection from a dead patient, said another neighbor. “But we’re more worried about catching the flu from her family members after offering our condolences.”

First tests on 52-year-old Tran Thi Binh showed she had influenza A (H1N1), and the results of the second test that confirmed the infection came out late on Monday.

Dr. Phan Van Nghiem of HCMC Health Department said the body of the dead patient had been sterilized before being taken out of the hospital.

Nguyen Van Tung, director of District 10’s Preventive Health Center, said the center had informed the district government of the death early Tuesday as well as nearly 20 neighboring families that the deceased patient had contracted the flu.

Binh was admitted last Thursday with fatigue and breathing difficulty at the 115 People’s Hospital, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. When she did not show signs of recovery after four days of treatment, doctors from the city’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases were summoned on Sunday to conduct blood tests for influenza A (H1N1).

Binh had developed high fever, cough, vomiting and diarrhea since Monday last week.

Source: TN, Agencies