Pregnant women warned to get flu jab

By Evelyn Ring © Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited
Consultant obstetrician Dr Michael O’Connell said pregnant women who contracted the virus were four times more likely to develop complications including early labour or pneumonia from the virus. "This disorder is serious enough that if you get the serious end of the spectrum it can potentially be fatal," he said. The Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland is now urging pregnant or breastfeeding women to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus. "We are not trying to scaremonger. This is to try to give advice on the best thing to do and our feeling at this stage to prevent this is to take the vaccine," said Dr O’Connell. As many as 21,000 of the 70,000 pregnant women in Ireland could contract the virus and at least 10% could face hospitalisation, the doctor warned. Dr O’Connell would not give an indication of the number of pregnant women who have been hospitalised but it is understood one critically ill pregnant women is currently on a life support machine. Nine people with swine flu in Ireland have died and another 14 are fighting for their lives in intensive care. The latest person to die after contracting the virus is a 14-year-old boy who had an underlying medical condition. He died in a Dublin hospital.
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