Kiwi seriously ill in Athens with swine flu

New Zealand diplomats are providing help for a 23-year-old New Zealand woman reported in a serious condition in a Greek hospital, after being diagnosed with swine flu.

The Kathimerini newspaper reported she was transferred to the intensive-care unit of an Athens hospital with serious respiratory problems, having tested positive for the H1N1 virus.

"The New Zealand tourist brings the number of serious cases of swine flu recorded in Greece to 15 with just one death linked exclusively to the virus," the newspaper reported.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Wellington said the New Zealand embassy in Rome and its honorary consul in Athens were providing support for the New Zealander, and a family member travelling with her. The woman's name has not been released.

The Northern Hemisphere is on the brink of its winter flu season, and Greece has just reported its first swine flu infection in a child, a Thessaloniki schoolgirl aged 16 who was treated at a hospital in the northern city.

- NZPA