You're reading: Health Ministry: Flu, respiratory diseases claim 344 lives in Ukraine

The current flu epidemic and other acute respiratory diseases in Ukraine has claimed 344 lives by Wednesday evening, the Health Ministry said.

It said 18 people had died of such diseases in the previous 24 hours.

The ministry said 1.502 million people had contracted such illnesses since the epidemic broke out and that 44,781 had fallen ill in the past 24 hours.

A total of 83,904 people have been hospitalized since the start of the epidemic, and 54,407 of them have been discharged from the hospital by Wednesday evening.

The ministry also said 2,878 people had been hospitalized for the previous 24 hours.

The ministry has published no separate statistics on cases of A/H1N1 influenza or swine flu.