5-month-old reports complete recovery from H1N1

PUNE: From a private city hospital to the paediatric isolation ward at Sassoon and back home, the five-month-old girl child is not only the youngest H1N1 positive patient in the city, but is also the youngest to have recovered even after her condition became critical. The infant is nothing short of an epitome of hope for Pune, now nicknamed the country's swine flu capital.
"We admitted the child to the ICU on August 25, with complaints of fever, cough and breathing difficulty.Feeding her was also becoming difficult," said the head of the paediatric department (HoD), who is also looking after the H1N1 flu isolation ward at Sassoon hospital. Her x-ray reports showed that she also had pneumonia, she added.
"After spending four days in the ICU her condition stabilised and we shifted her to the isolation ward, where the baby spent another three days. Though the baby did not need to be put on ventilator, we had to keep her on oxygen for five days because of the low oxygen saturation in her body. All this while she was administered Tamiflu and was given the usual treatment for H1N1," the doctor, who refused to be named, said.
It is suspected that the baby might have contracted the virus from her father, who had also tested positive. Her father, a 29-year-old resident of Malwadi, Hadapsar, was admitted to the isolation ICU of Sassoon on August 20. "He was suffering from acute pneumonia and was kept under observation in the ICU for two days," said B B Kadam, a medical officer at the hospital. He was discharged from the hospital on August 31.
The child's mother and her maternal grandmother stayed by her side throughout her illness. "During a child's illness, parents do not worry about the risks of contracting the disease. The child is more important to them than their own lives,' said the HoD.
The baby was discharged from the hospital on Monday after a complete recovery.