'It's out of control'

The brother of a 39-year-old woman who gave birth shortly before dying of swine flu has spoken of his concerns over how swine flu cases are being handled.

Ruptara Miah died in London's Whipps Cross Hospital on Monday. Her brother, Abdul Malik, sent in this account to the BBC.

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Ruptara Miah was admitted to Whipps Cross hospital 3 weeks before she died

Ruptara was my older sister. She had been in hospital for almost three weeks. She initially went in with a cough and chesty infections, which the doctors said was pneumonia.

It was only later that it was confirmed that it was swine flu.

She was in the ICU [intensive care unit] and never regained full consciousness. She gave birth to a baby boy, who is now in ICU at another hospital fighting for his life as he was born prematurely.

We thought she was going to recover, so it goes without saying that we as a family are very upset and I was completely shocked.

My concerns are that, although the NHS and the medical professionals are doing all they can, they still seem to be keeping the issue of the impact of swine flu very 'hush hush'.

To my mind, it's definitely out of control and they need to inform everyone in plain language how we all need to co-operate in this.

They are stopping immediate family members from seeing their loved ones maybe for the last time

It's no good that news is announced every day of deaths, but with the proviso that many are dying with underlying medical conditions.

Ruptara was paralysed from the waist down after a road traffic accident, but she was fine before going in to hospital.

Let's face the facts, how many of us can really say 100% that we do not have any medical problems, as minor as they may be?

It's easy to use this as a means of making things sound better.

It is also sad that while they are trying to reduce the risks in hospitals, it also means that sometimes they are stopping immediate family members from seeing their loved ones maybe for the last time.

In our case, Ruptara's younger daughters were not allowed to see their own mother until an hour before she died.

Surely the hospitals need to think about how loved ones can still be seen by their families but in the safest possible way.