UAE | Health
Virus keeps couple away from first born
A couple had been waiting for their first child for twenty years but it's been nine days since his birth and they still cannot see him because his mother contracted the H1N1 virus.
- By Binsal Abdul Kader, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:10 September 16, 2009
- Image Credit: Ravindranath/Gulf News
- Saidalavi Kavungal at Al Jazira hospital where his wife is in the intensive care unit, having been diagnosed with swine flu. He does not know how his wife contracted the illness.
Abu Dhabi: A couple had been waiting for their first child for twenty years but it's been nine days since his birth and they still cannot see him because his mother contracted the H1N1 virus.
The mother of the baby boy was diagnosed with swine flu and underwent a Caesarean section, the husband Saidalavi Kavungal, 42, told Gulf News.
"Thereafter her condition deteriorated and she was transferred to another prominent hospital. She has been connected to a ventilator in the intensive care unit," he said.
"Doctors have confirmed that the baby does not have any infection," said Saidalavi, who has been living in Abu Dhabi since 1988.
As he was taking care of his wife, doctors suggested that Saidalavi keep away from the baby to avoid any possible infection from him. "Although it is painful for me, I find solace in the fact that it is for the good health of my baby," said Saidalavi, a bus driver at Abu Dhabi Airport.
When Suhra Kavungal, 36, was admitted to a hospital in the capital with a cough and fever on September 3, the couple thought that everything would soon be well. However, she was later diagnosed with H1N1.
She underwent a Caesarean section on September 7, when she was six months and 26 days pregnant.
He does not know how his wife contracted swine flu.
"We never went to public places like shopping malls, as instructed by the doctor."
Nobody in the villa in which they live had the disease according to Saidalavi.
He recalls that Suhra fell pregnant at a time when they almost had lost all hope for a baby. "We have been undergoing several treatments [for infertility] during the past two decades," he explained.
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