A woman who was diagnosed with swine flu died earlier this week at the National Hospital in Oslo (Rikshospitalet). Her death was the third tied to swine flu in Norway in recent weeks, after an 11-year-old boy from Porsgrunn died in December and a man died over the weekend at the hospital in Ålesund.
A total of seven swine flu patients have been treated in the intensive care ward at Rikshospitalet during the current flu season and Akershus University Hospital in Lørenskog has had 181 cases of swine flu alone. Doctors and nurses at the hospital have complained that they don’t have enough staffing to keep up with the influx of flu- and other other patients arriving in the emergency room.
Newspaper VG reported that the woman who died Monday morning had been treated with the use of heart and lung machines at the National Hospital over an extended period. Swine flu has also been diagnosed in Northern Norway, where a woman tested positive in Harstad and was transferred to the University Hospital in Tromsø.
This year’s flu season has been severe in Norway, with hospital admissions in Østlandet increasing dramatically since New Year. Health authorities have been trying to boost staffing at the largest hospitals in southern Norway to cope with the flu cases.
newsinenglish.no staff
