Warsaw: Swine flu has claimed its first victim in Poland, after a 37-year-old man died of respiratory complications, a medical official said yesterday.

Jerzy Karpinski, head of the medical service in the Gdansk region of northern Poland, told reporters that tests had confirmed the presence of the H1N1 virus in the man who died on Friday afternoon in hospital.

The individual had initially been hospitalised with suspected severe pneumonia in the northern town of Puck, before being transferred Thursday to Gdansk’s contagious diseases unit.

A specialised laboratory in the northern city of Olsztyn confirmed the presence of the H1N1 virus yesterday, he said.

Poland has so far recorded 237 cases of swine flu.

The government, however, has decided to hold off buying vaccines against the virus, arguing that those on offer have not yet been sufficiently tested.

Earlier this month, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk slammed drug companies selling swine flu vaccines for allegedly refusing to take legal responsibility for any possible side effects.

He also claimed that mass vaccination programmes in other countries seemed excessive and out of step with the real epidemic.

More than 6,250 people have died worldwide since the swine flu pandemic was first discovered in April in Mexico, according to the most recent World Health Organisation data, with more than two-thirds of victims in the Americas.