Mexico faces criticism over swine flu response

No health workers have inspected her home, asked how her husband might have contracted the illness or tested the neighbors' pigs, she said.

Cordova acknowledged that her case isn't unique.

"We haven't given medicine to all of them because we still don't have enough personnel," he said.

Cordova said he couldn't provide information on the victims for reasons of confidentiality, but promised to eventually release a statistical breakdown. He said he couldn't provide that data now "because it's being processed."

Asked whether he could at least say how many of the 20 confirmed victims were men and how many were women, he said: "I don't have that information."

The government has insisted it acted quickly and decisively when presented with the evidence of a new virus.

But even as it did so, it acknowledged the outbreak began earlier than April 12, the date it had previously linked to the first case. Cordova confirmed Monday that a 4-year-old boy who was part of an outbreak in eastern Veracruz state that began in February had swine flu. He later recovered.

Residents of the town of Perote said at the time that they had a new, aggressive bug — even taking to the streets to demonstrate against the pig farm they blamed for their illness — but were told they were suffering from a typical flu. It was only after U.S. labs confirmed a swine flu outbreak that Mexican officials sent the boy's sample in for swine flu testing.

Mexico's Agriculture Department said Monday that inspectors found no sign of swine flu among pigs around the farm in Veracruz, and that no infected pigs have been found yet anywhere in Mexico.

Meanwhile, some people complained that health workers were turning them away, even as officials urged people to seek treatment quickly if they felt symptoms of flu coming on.

Elias Camacho, a 31-year-old truck driver with fever, cough and body aches, was ordered out of a government ambulance Sunday because paramedics complained he might be contagious, his father-in-law told the AP. When family members took him to a hospital in a taxi, Jorge Martinez Cruz said, a doctor told him he wasn't sick.

Camacho was finally admitted to the hospital — and placed in an area marked "restricted" — after a doctor at a private clinic notified state health authorities, Martinez said.

In Mexico City, Jose Isaac Cepeda said two hospitals refused to treat his fever, diarrhea and joint pains. The first turned him away because he wasn't registered in the public health system, he said.

The second, he said, didn't let him in "because they say they're too busy."

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