Madrid - Spanish health authorities Friday expressed concern about the occasional aggressiveness of swine flu, which killed a 33-year-old woman without health problems that would explain the rapid progression of her disease. The woman, who was of Nigerian origin, died on Thursday on the Balearic Island of Majorca. She had been hospitalized since Sunday.
"We are very worried, because until now the most serious cases had been people with ... previous illnesses," Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez said.
The woman developed pneumonia, and did not respond to treatment, despite her rapid hospitalization. Jimenez said Spain would inform the World Health Organization (WHO) about the case.
A 71-year-old man also died of H1N1 influenza on Thursday in Madrid, but he had previously suffered from a chronic lung disease.
The two deaths brought the death toll to four in Spain, which has more than 1,200 confirmed cases of H1N1.
Jimenez said swine flu could kill about as many people as ordinary flu, which claims some 8,000 lives annually in Spain.
Spain's first H1N1 fatality was Dalilah Mimouni, a 20-year-old Moroccan woman who had an emergency Caesarian section before her death. A glaring medical error then led to the death of her baby at a Madrid hospital.
Hundreds of people attended the boy's funeral in M'diq, northern Morocco, on Thursday. King Mohammed VI had sent a plane to pick up the body of baby Rayan, who was buried next to his mother.
The Madrid health authorities said they would install computer systems to prevent errors such as the one that killed Rayan, who was fed intravenously rather than through the nose.
