Children wear protective masks at a kindergarten in Hanoi in August

As of Sunday, Vietnam had recorded 10,021 cases of influenza A (H1N1) and 23 related deaths, the Ministry of Health reported that day.

The viral disease has spread to 59 of Vietnam’s 61 provinces and cities and is at its worst in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and the central highlands province of Lam Dong.

In response to the current happenings of swine flu, which is forecast to peak in November and December, the ministry’s Preventive Health and Environment Department is adjusting its instructions on monitoring and combating the virus.

Already Thua Thien-Hue city and several other provinces have started treatment with the antiviral drug Tamiflu even before testing people who present with the symptoms of H1N1.

In related news, Reuters on Monday reported HCMC-based Hospital for Tropical Diseases have detected three swine flu cases that were resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu, one of two drugs shown to work well against H1N1.

The three, including a three-year-old child, were admitted to the hospital late August and September and have all recovered, Reuters quoted Rogier van Doorn, a clinical microbiologist and doctor at the hospital, as saying.

“The viruses that were isolated when they were admitted were still sensitive (to the drug), but during treatment with oseltamivir, resistance built up,” said van Doorn, referring to the generic form of Tamiflu.

“So it was not transmission of resistant viruses, but we observed that it developed during treatment of these three patients … we have no evidence to show that (there was further transmission of resistant viruses),” he told Reuters.

Tamiflu-resistant swine flu cases have been reported in Japan, Hong Kong, Denmark and the US.

Just as alarming as the swine flu statistics are the incidence and severity of red eye, hand-foot-mouth disease and respiratory inflammation in HCMC.

The acute conjunctivitis of red eye is a common seasonal ailment in Southeast Asia but more people are catching it than ever this year, and the cases are often more critical, according to HCMC Eye Hospital director Tran Thi Phuong Thu.

“In the past few days, some 30 percent of our nearly 2,000 outpatients in that time have presented with red eye,” Dr. Thu said.

The same worrying trend has been observed at the city’s other eye clinics, an ophthalmologist from Cho Ray Hospital told Thanh Nien.

For children, one of the current scourges is hand-foot-mouth disease.

At Children’s Hospital No. 1 in HCMC, three acute cases a day are being taken to the emergency room with heart complications and nervous disorders stemming from hand-foot-mouth disease, according to the hospital’s Dr. Truong Huu Khanh.

Last weekend, more than 60 of the 143 children being treated in Dr. Khanh’s unit had the disease.

“Most of them are under three years old,” Khanh noted.

It’s the same at Children Hospital No.2, where 55 hand-foot-mouth patients were being treated last weekend.

Doctors have also reported more children with respiratory inflammation.

More than 200 inpatients with inflamed lungs are crowded into the 80-bed chest ward of Children’s Hospital No.1.

Worse still, around 20 percent of them have developed pneumonia, according to department chief Dr. Tran Anh Tuan.

The only good news from the medical front is that dengue fever seems to be losing its grip.

Whereas Children’s Hospital No. 1 was treating more than 100 dengue patients at any one time before, the number of late has not exceeded 90.

Still, dengue fever specialist Le Bich Lien of Children’s Hospital No.1 warns against complacency.

“Dengue can strike again. It depends on the weather, and whether the public health authorities take the appropriate precautions. There have been years when dengue fever peaked in November and December,” Dr. Lien said.

Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre