A soldier from Coleraine, County Londonderry, has died after contracting swine flu.
30-year-old Lee Porter, a bombardier in the Royal Artillery, died in a Surrey hospital last Friday, two weeks after falling sick. It is understood he had underlying health problems.
In a statement, the Ministry of Defence said: "Our thoughts go out to his family, who were at his bedside."
He is the 28th person known to have died after getting swine flu in England. Three people have died in Scotland.
More than half of children taking the swine flu drug Tamiflu experience side-effects such as nausea and nightmares, according to a recent study.
An estimated 150,000 people with flu symptoms were prescribed the drug in the UK last week, according to figures revealed yesterday.
Studies of children attending three schools in London and one in the South West showed that 51-53 per cent had one or more side-effects from the medication, which is offered to everyone in England with swine flu symptoms.
The researchers said "likely side effects were common" and the "burden of side effects needs to be considered" when deciding on giving Tamiflu to children prophylactically, especially given that swine flu symptoms are generally mild.
Pregnant women are four times more likely than the general population to need hospital treatment for H1N1 swine flu, data from the US suggests.
The findings from the small-scale study suggest pregnancy increases the risk of complications without speedy anti-viral treatment.
It also underlines the need to ensure pregnant women are made a top priority when a vaccine becomes available.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study appears in The Lancet.
The swine flu pandemic appears to have peaked for the moment but the virus will return with "a very big surge" in the autumn, the UK's chief medical officer said today.
Sir Liam Donaldson hailed new data as proof of a "pretty firm downturn" in the number of people seeking medical help with H1N1 from a GP. "There's a possibility the virus has had its fill of us for the moment," he said.
The number of people consulting a doctor with flu-like symptoms has fallen from 155.3 for every 100,000 people to 138.2 for every 100,000. He said. "It's peaked in America, it's peaked in Mexico, it's peaked in Scotland, so why shouldn't it peak here?" About one in every 158 people in England has had flu in the current outbreak and 27 have died.
School holidays and people being away on summer breaks helped explain the apparent decline, said Donaldson, adding: "We don't anticipate it staying down for too long, because we have our own flu season coming up."
In the UK, stocks of antiviral medicines and antibiotics are available to treat anyone who becomes ill during the current swine flu pandemic.
A new vaccine against the virus is also being developed, with the first batches expected to be delivered in the autumn.
Paracetomol
As with ordinary flu, people who come down with swine flu should take lots of rest and use standard paracetomol-based cold remedies to reduce their temperature and help relieve symptoms.
Antivirals
The antiviral medications oseltamavir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) are also being used throughout the UK to treat people with swine flu. Antivirals are not a cure for swine flu, but will help to:
· - reduce the length of time you are ill by around one day,
· r - relieve some of the symptoms, and
· r - reduce the potential for serious complications such as pneumonia.
The UK has large stocks of Tamiflu and Relenza and there is currently enough to treat half the population. New orders of Tamiflu have recently been placed to increase UK supplies to 50m doses, enough to treat 80% of the population.
Tamiflu and Relenza are both medicines of the same type but Relenza comes as an inhaler (rather than a pill) and is recommended for use in pregnancy
