UK NEWS

MOTHER DIES OF SWINE FLU DAYS AFTER GIVING BIRTH

Susan Ford was 35 weeks pregnant when admitted to hospital with severe symptoms

Tuesday November 3,2009

By Chris Riches

A GRIEVING family yesterday demanded more specialist emergency beds after a young mother died from swine flu days after giving birth to her first child.

Susan Ford, 31, was 35 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to hospital with severe flu-like symptoms last month.

She had an emergency caesarean section and daughter Poppy was born – but Susan had to be placed immediately on a ventilator and put into intensive care.

Her family announced that died from severe pneumonia, exacerbated by the H1N1 virus, on Saturday – 18 days after the birth.

But they blasted the Government’s lack of lifesaving beds that could have helped her fight the illness at Salford Royal Hospital in Greater Manchester.

Her family and devastated partner John Freeman, 26, are demanding more machines that deliver extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo)– a procedure which oxygenates and circulates the blood.

Susan’s doctors could not find one. There are only five Ecmo beds, already credited as saving Swine Flu sufferers’ lives, in the whole country but none in the North-west.

Susan’s uncle, Robin Donnelly-Gallagher, 53, said: “Susan was full of health and looking forward to the birth. It’s a scandal no Ecmo machines are available in Greater Manchester.

“Susan may have lived and Poppy would have had a mum to help her grow up. Now it’s too late and the family grieves for our beautiful, lost Susan.”

A study in one US medical journal says most patients with swine flu who have severe respiratory failure will survive if they receive Ecmo treatment. But there is only one adult unit in England, at the Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, with five beds.

Susan’s mother Wynne said: “We don’t know if she would have survived if she had access to an Ecmo bed but we believe she would have had a better chance. Those machines should be in every big-city hospital.”

Postgraduate student Susan, who lived in Leigh, Greater Manchester, was engaged to her partner John.

Doctors confirmed she had the H1N1 virus and she was given Tamiflu. But after the caesarean she developed severe pneumonia. She died at 4.30am on Saturday. Poppy, who weighed five-and-a-half pounds, was due to leave hospital last night.

Pregnant swine flu sufferer Sharon Pentleton was rushed from Scotland to Sweden for Ecmo treatment earlier this year. She recovered and had a healthy baby boy last month.

Amazon.co.uk Widgets