H1N1: Clinical audit to begin today

Giving the details of the audit, Dr Usha Vasunkar, director of Health and Family Services, said that Monday's meeting discussed the procedure of audit.  "Though 40 per cent of the deceased had co-morbid factors (pre-existing illness) and many died due to late admission, we still wish to conduct an audit to know the actual cause for death,” she said.

The audit will be conducted based on the case sheets of the deceased which will be collected from different hospitals.  Dr Shashidhar Buggi, Director of RGICD, said that a chart has already been prepared with all the details of the deceased like name, age, sex, symptoms, cause of death etc. "The team of auditors will sit and scrutinise the details along with case sheets to know the cause for death", he said

Three more deaths

Three more have succumbed to H1N1 influenza, taking the toll to 81 in the state.  In Bangalore alone, 59 have succumbed to the flu. Two women expired at Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases (RGICD) while one-year-old girl died at a private hospital in Gulbarga.

Manjula (35) and Renuka (22) died, a day after their admission at RGICD.  A doctor at the Institute said that both the patients were in a very critical condition and were put on ventilator, immediately after their admission.  However, their condition deteriorated and died. Swab results which arrived only on Monday tested them positive for Flu.

Meanwhile, 12 fresh cases tested positive for H1N1 influenza-11 in Bangalore and one in Bijapur--taking the total number of positive cases to 899 in the State.