{"id":77457,"date":"2018-05-18T14:49:48","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T21:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=77457"},"modified":"2018-05-18T14:49:48","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T21:49:48","slug":"new-child-killing-virus-hits-sri-lankas-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/05\/18\/new-child-killing-virus-hits-sri-lankas-south\/","title":{"rendered":"New child-killing virus hits Sri Lanka&#8217;s south"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 id=\"Time\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Source: Xinhua\u00a0\u00a0 2018-05-17 15:50:54<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<div id=\"Content\" class=\"artTxt\">\n<p>COLOMBO, May 17 (Xinhua) &#8212; Sri Lanka&#8217;s health officials on Thursday warned that a new virus affecting children was spreading in the island&#8217;s south and five deaths had already been reported.<\/p>\n<p>The Government Information Department quoting medical officials said the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital in Galle had been experiencing an increase in the number of patients who arrived with a fever over the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>According to doctors, patients who were admitted include children aged two to three years old as well as infants who are less than six months old.<\/p>\n<p>The symptoms of the disease include high fever, cough and breathing difficulties.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Aruna De Silva of the Pediatric Unit at Karapitiya Hospital said the doctors had examined the matter and had identified that the situation arose as a result of a virus that causes Pneumonia.<\/p>\n<p>He added that the disease is caused by the Influenza and Adino viruses and it affects children who are less than two years old.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lankan Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne urged those suffering from these symptoms to seek medical attention immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Health officials in the southern province said the staff at all divisions had been notified to identify the disease-affected areas.<\/p>\n<p>The epidemiology unit of the Health Ministry has also commenced a broad investigation into the deaths at the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Xinhua\u00a0\u00a0 2018-05-17 15:50:54 COLOMBO, May 17 (Xinhua) &#8212; Sri Lanka&#8217;s health officials on Thursday warned that a new virus affecting children was spreading in the island&#8217;s south and five deaths had already been reported. The Government Information Department quoting medical officials said the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital in Galle had been experiencing an increase in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}