The Philippine Online Chronicles

The House of Representatives today suspended its operations until Monday, June 29, after confirming that the first H1N1-related fatality in the country, the 49-year old woman who died due to chronic heart disease last week, was an employee of the House Committee on Higher Education.

Congressional staff and employees were sent home at around 11 am today after they were given free flu vaccine. Congress was declared “off-limits” until Sunday to give way to sanitation and disinfection procedures.

House Committee on Health chair South Cotabato Representative Arthur Pingoy said that Congress is not prepared for this situation but is “coordinating with the Department of Health and other concerned agencies” regarding the development. DOH and House officials have met to “discuss what to do amid the development.”

In a briefing, Pingoy said, "What we need is a permanent body that shall deal with emergency crisis situations such as this, so that the country can be more proactive when faced with such circumstances."

He said in a news report from BusinessWorld Online that Congress “has committed to hasten the approval of House Bill 72, authored by Muntinlupa Rep. Rozzano Rufino B. Biazon, which seeks the creation of a public health emergency council (PHEC) that would be convened every time the President declares a state of public health emergency.”

"The bill had been approved by the committee two weeks before the break. I had already written the House leadership to appeal to Malacañang to certify this bill as urgent so that when we go back to work we can have this measure approved immediately," he said.

Pingoy said that aside from the fatality, another House employee from the Congressional Planning and Budget Development Office has been confirmed to have acquired the virus but is now recovering.

Inquirer.net reported that all employees of the House of Representatives will be monitored, as per instructions by House Speaker Prospero Nograles. He said that the medical department of the House “will work this out properly according to standard procedures.”

Post-autopsy findings disclosed that the victim died of acute myocardial infraction. She was confirmed to have A (H1N1) after her autopsy last Friday, according to sunstar.com.ph.

Meanwhile, DOH Secretary Francisco Duque advised those in the ‘high-risk groups’ to immediately see a doctor once they have flu symptoms.

“They should not wait for their symptoms to worsen because they are prone to many infections other than the novel virus such as our seasonal flu strains. These are patients with uncontrolled diabetes, frank cardiovascular disease, COPD, organ transplant recipients, those who are immunocompromised, those with chronic liver and kidney disease, people suffering from other infections like HIV/AIDs and TB, pregnant women and the very young and the elderly,” Duque said.

As of today, 35 persons more have fully recovered from the novel virus, thus bringing the total count of the fully recovered to 374, or 84 percent out of the 445 confirmed cases as of June 22,” based on a report by Business Mirror.