Israeli man's death could bring swine flu toll to 18

An Israeli man who died Sunday of a chronic illness may have succumbed to complications of the swine flu, Army Radio reported.

The Health Ministry said that while it was still to soon to verify whether the 62-year-old man had contracted the world pandemic, the likelihood could not be ruled out.

Should it emerge that the man did have swine flu, that would bring the death toll in Israel to 18.

Israel's swine flu fatality rates have run high when compared to European and other Middle Eastern countries. According to information from the New England Journal of Medicine, no fatalities have yet been reported in most European countries.

Prof. Dan Engelhard , head of the medical team advising the Health Ministry on epidemics and chief of the pediatric department at Hadassah Ein Karem University Hospital in Jerusalem, said Israel's high rate was probably a result of the method of counting deaths from the H1N1 virus.

"It's probably most affected by the way in which every state determines swine flu deaths," he said. "In Israel we took up a very general approach, including seriously ill patients who died with swine flu but not necessarily of swine flu."

This has been noted in several swine flu deaths in the past weeks, including a 4-year-old girl from the Bedouin village Umm al-Ganam, who died from swine flu while suffering from a bone disease that compromised her immune system.

Last Wednesday, the Health Ministry ordered all hospitals and clinics to increase their staff as of November 1 to cope with the expected spread of swine flu this winter.