Feature: Confusion of first confirmed A/H1N1 flu sufferer´s mother

Source: Xinhua | 05-11-2009 15:15

LA GLORIA, Mexico, May 10 (Xinhua) -- Though the lethal A/H1N1 flu pandemic begins to wane with fewer new cases being identified, the mother of the world's first confirmed victim still knows nothing about how her son caught the disease.

"I don't understand why Edgar does not know where he might have caught it, if we never leave here," Maria del Carmen Hernandez from the small town La Gloria in east Mexico told Xinhua. Her five-year-old son Edgar Carmen Hernandez was later confirmed as the first case of the lethal A/H1N1 flu.

"I would like someone to come here and explain, just to know, just to know," Carmen Hernandez said as her son munched on sweets, like any other sugar-addicted minor.

Edgar, now known as nino milagro (miracle boy), survived the disease thanks to a few days of basic flu medicine.

His mother, Maria del Carmen Hernandez, told Xinhua she took Edgar to a clinic on April 1 after noticing the classic A/H1N1 symptoms: high fever, coughing, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea. Some 1,200 people of all 3,000 residents in the town had suffered similar symptoms before Edgar.

"Suddenly I saw that he was not getting out of bed in the morning and that is not normal for him," she said. "He is a very active child. I saw he had a temperature and so I took him to the health center here. That morning they gave me no more than medicine to reduce his temperature and for his sore throat," she said.

Edgar was one of the last in the town to be diagnosed with a severe respiratory illness and was ordered to stay at home and take medicine. Days later the family found out he was the first to be confirmed with A/H1N1 flu.

Fidel Herrera Veracruz, state governor of the Veracruz state where La Gloria belongs, arrived at the town, some 230 km from the worst hit Mexico City, on April 27, and since then residents have felt being watched. The flu hurricane has infected more than 4,500worldwide and killed at least 48 in Mexico.