Wednesday 12 August 2009

Meningitis killed woman wrongly diagnosed with swine flu

A woman diagnosed with swine flu died of meningitis just days later, an inquest heard today.

Jasvir Kaur Gill, 48, started suffering from a sore throat and vomiting.

She was given a telephone diagnosis of Swine Flu and told to take Tamiflu, but just 12 hours later the mother-of-three from Leicester had collapsed and was taken to hospital. An inquest opening at the city's Town Hall today heard she died of meningococcal septicaemia - blood poisoning caused by the same bacteria that causes meningitis - four days later.

Today her 25-year-old son Sukhvinder Gill called for doctors to consider other illnesses than Swine Flu when making diagnoses.

At the hearing today, Mr Gill told Leicester City Coroner Catherine Mason that his mother started complaining of a sore throat during the evening of Saturday, August 1.

She then vomited repeatedly through the night, prompting her husband to call NHS Direct at 5am on Sunday.
This is the second case: we reported this story last week.

Source: The Metro

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