H1N1 FLU: DON'T GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM, FAZIO SAYS
H1N1 FLU: DON'T GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM, FAZIO SAYS
(ANSA) - Rome, November 2 - Junior Health Minister Ferruccio Fazio appealed to Italians on Monday not to go to the hospital if they think they have the H1N1 flu virus.
Fazio warned that a wave of patients in Italy's emergency rooms would risk ''clogging'' the system and said people with the flu should stay home and call their doctors instead.
The junior minister also responded to fears over the rising number of victims saying that ''Italy's death toll is half the the European Average''.
Italy counted 14 victims from the virus on Monday half of whom have died in the city of Naples over the past week.
Fazio, however, said the day's count could reach 16 or 17 as a number of seriously ill patients around the country continued fighting for their lives.
The most recent victims were 45 and 72-year-old women, who died in the city on Monday.
Naples prosecutors said they were looking into the death of an apparently healthy 12-year-old girl who died of the virus this weekend 48 hours after coming down with symptoms.
Responding to complains by some hospitals that vaccines were not arriving fast enough, Fazio said that one million doses had been distributed so far, which would rise to two million doses by the end of the week.
Fazio said the health ministry counted on sending out at least six million doses of the vaccines by the end of November.
The junior health ministry underlined that ''we can only distribute the vaccine as fast as pharmaceutical companies produce it,'' but that the country's immunization campaign was nonetheless ahead of schedule.
Following an 80% jump in the number of children taken to the emergency room last week, Lazio regional coordinator for the pandemic, Antonio Palma, lamented that ''50% of the region's pediatricians are telling their patients that the vaccine isn't safe''.
''That just isn't the case,'' said Palma, who said that small children and pregnant women were among high-risk cases of the virus in line for the vaccination after people with debilitating or chronic illnesses.
Fazio added that ''we don't want to vaccinate babies because they're in danger, but because they spread the virus between each other and their parents''.
