Swine flu warning for pregnant women
By Di Bain for The World Today
Obstetricians are urging pregnant women to stay home and even bring forward their maternity leave plans to avoid catching swine flu.
The deadly virus is rapidly spreading in Australia and 11 pregnant women are fighting for their lives or in intensive care, while hospital emergency departments struggle to keep up.
As the number of confirmed swine flu cases in Australia marches beyond 10,000, pregnant women are beginning to present at emergency wards.
It is understood that in Victoria, the state which has had the most swine flu related deaths, two women were fighting for their lives in intensive care units last night after giving birth.
The situation in New South Wales is worse - Jeremy McAnulty from the New South Wales Health Service, says doctors are being extra cautious when pregnant women suffer flu-like symptoms.
"My understanding is that there are five in intensive care and four on life support in western Sydney at the moment," he said.
"Of course it is concerning when people are in intensive care, but I guess we have known from seasonal influenza, even before human swine flu, that influenza can be quite a severe illness in pregnant women, particularly in second and third trimesters.
"It's probably related to their immunity changes and their whole system is being overloaded by the pregnancy, and when influenza is on top of that it, can have a big effect on their system and their health."
'Stay at home'
Professor Brian Trudinger from Westmead Hospital in Sydney says staff are trying to manage two pregnant women with swine flu who are in intensive care.
He says most pregnant women in general will not get sick but they should be vigilant because swine flu is much more virulent than the normal flu.
"It's dangerous because ... in pregnancy your body does much more work," he said.
"In other words, things like heart output is increased and blood flow to various organs is increased, blood flow to the placenta is increased and so on, and so if you get a febrile illness on top of that, your body also has to do more work because of the febrile illness.
"So you get one load on top of another load and so you become particularly unwell
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没办法，只能硬抗。这个鬼政府，真比国内差远了
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要不要回国啊....
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今天连gp都告诉我，没事别到medical centre去。
好可怕哦
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太恐怖了，我不管了，下次出门一定要带上口罩了！
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拿我们这种一天到晚都要呆在医院里工作的人不是要撞墙拉。。。
关键是把自己身体抵抗力加强了
说到底，就是流感而已
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我记得我上次产检，就戴了口罩，结果接待的门诊问我是不是不舒服，如果不舒服就出去，不可以呆在大厅。把我郁闷死了
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今天公司有了第一例确诊病例。。。MD说现在开始，只要有感冒症状，看医生& 在家办公。。。
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其实在医院的其它地方工作都还好了，最危险的就是在急诊工作，每天接触的都是新的病人，转到病房的病人大都经过初步确诊，如果疑是swine flu，肯定会特殊处理的
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悉尼也很多啦！
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在这里真是,病人满街跑,健康人都躲在家
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