Swine Flu death toll reaches four in Spain

[mysteriouza]

The first victim's premature baby died from a medical error and now lies alongside his mother in her home town's cemetery

Spain’s Health Ministry has this Thursday confirmed the third death from the A(H1N1) virus – reported by El Mundo as a 33 year old woman from Nigeria who died in hospital on Thursday afternoon in Palma de Mallorca.

She is understood to have been admitted on Wednesday with symptoms of pneumonia. No further details on her identity have been released to the press as yet.

Overnight a further victim, a 71 year old man who died in the La Paz Hospital in Madrid was also confirmed. He was suffering from a lung illness, complicated by infection by the A(H1N1) virus.

The body of the premature baby born to Spain’s first victim of the virus arrived in Morocco on Thursday morning, for baby Rayan to be buried alongside his mother, Dalilah Mimouni, who died from the virus at the end of June. His body arrived on a flight from the Getafe military base in Madrid, chartered for the family by King Mohamed VI of Morocco, and was then buried with a short graveside ceremony at the cemetery in his mother’s home town of Mdiq.

Born at 7 months old by Caesarean section only hours before his mother’s death, Rayan died from a dreadful medical error this Monday, after he was mistakenly fed baby formula intravenously instead of through a tube to his stomach.

Baby Rayan’s father has said he plans to take action against the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid where both his wife and baby son died. It’s
understood the court in charge of the investigation into Rayan’s death now has the first details of the autopsy results, while lawyers representing the nurse who made the error which cost him his life say systems should have been in place to lessen the risk of such dreadful mistakes. They also argue, Telecinco reports, that she should not have been left alone on her first day of working in the neonatal ICU.

Meanwhile it has emerged in El Mundo today, that nurses in the neonatal unit at the hospital complained in 2008 about their ‘great concern about the quality of care and safety’ offered to patients and their families.