AFP/DPA/Belgrade

Serbian authorities decided yesterday to extend the autumn school holidays to stop an outbreak of the swine flu epidemic, a minister said.

“I decided this morning to prolong the school holidays ... until Wednesday” (November 11), Education Minister Zarko Obradovic told B92 radio.

The announcement came as most of the 35 new cases confirmed since last week appeared to be school-age children.

Serbia has so far confirmed 169 cases of A(H1N1) flu, but the real number is feared to be higher as several schools were shut down and visits to hospitals throughout the country were forbidden due to the flu surge.

A 46-year-old woman who died in the central town of Kragujevac last month was Serbia’s first reported death from swine flu.

Slovenian health authorities meanwhile announced yesterday the first swine flu death in the former Yugoslav republic.

The patient, a woman in her fifties who was chronically ill, was hospitalised on Friday.

Her condition had been critical since Monday, Slovenian media reported.

“The cause of death were complications of her chronic illness caused by the swine flu infection,” a Ljubljana’s hospital spokesman was quoted as saying to Internet news channel 24ur.

In Turkey, the death toll from the swine flu has more than doubled in the past 24 hours in Turkey, with health officials announcing yesterday that the illness has claimed its 11th victim in that country.

The latest victims included a 22-month-old baby and a 14-year-old boy who died overnight in Konya, a city in central Turkey. The first victim of the flu in Turkey, a 28-year-old hospital janitor in the capital city of Ankara, died on October 24.

According to health officials, some 1,800 people have been affected by the disease in Turkey, although there is concern that there is a large number of unreported cases.

Meanwhile, the first Belarusian death from swine flu was registered by health officials yesterday.

The victim, a 37-year-old female resident of the town of Drogichin, died on Friday, but results of blood tests confirming the presence of the H1N1 virus only became available yesterday, said Oleg Arnautov, chief doctor of the western Brest province.

The woman reportedly had visited Ukraine’s western Kovel region, currently near the centre of Ukraine’s flu outbreak, in early October.

She became ill in the latter half of October and experienced severe flu symptoms for four days before consulting doctors, Arnautov said.

In recent weeks, the Belarusian capital Minsk has seen an estimated 10 deaths of persons suffering from pneumonia preceded by flu-like symptoms.