A Cambodian poultry vendor transports chickens to a poultry market in Phnom Penh. A three-year-old girl has died of bird flu in Cambodia, initial tests showed, and seven other suspected cases have been reported in the first outbreak in the country in two years.(AFP/file/Khem Sovannara) 24 March 2006
AP
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Seven sick people in Cambodia are being checked for bird flu, the World Health Organization said Friday, a day after tests indicated a 3-year-old girl from the same southern village died of the deadly H5N1 virus.
Three children and four adults from Tuol Prik in Kampong Speu province, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital, Phnom Penh, came down with fevers and cold symptoms after having direct contact with sick fowl or with the girl who died, said Megge Miller, a WHO epidemiologist based in Cambodia.
There is a “possibility” they were infected with H5N1, Miller said. “We’re being just very cautious. We’re treating it very seriously.”
Test results, sent to the French Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh, were expected by early next week, she said. A cross-check of the results would be sent to the Pasteur Institute in Paris or another WHO-affiliated lab, she said.
The 3-year-old girl, also from Tuol Prik, died Tuesday at a hospital in Phnom Penh.
“Preliminary (test) results suggested that she tested positive for H5N1,” Miller said Thursday.
If confirmed, the girl would be Cambodia’s fifth fatality from the disease since the start of 2005, and the first this year. According to WHO statistics, 103 people in eight countries, mostly in Asia, have died from the virus. Most human infections have been linked to direct contact with infected birds.
Poultry had been dying since February in the area around Tuol Prik, according to Miller, who said that according to the girl’s parents, she had been playing with sick birds a few days before she fell ill.
The virus has killed or prompted the slaughter of 200 million birds worldwide since 2003.
Earlier this month, the U.N. agriculture agency said Cambodian officials should expand their surveillance of wild and migratory birds from Southeast Asia to Europe and Africa as part of measures to halt the spread of the H5N1 virus.
“Cambodia, with 60 percent of the land under forest cover and with many wetland areas, is home to millions of wild birds,” the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement. The country is also an important transit point for many birds which migrate between the northern and southern hemispheres, FAO said.
Three children and four adults from Tuol Prik in Kampong Speu province, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital, Phnom Penh, came down with fevers and cold symptoms after having direct contact with sick fowl or with the girl who died, said Megge Miller, a WHO epidemiologist based in Cambodia.
There is a “possibility” they were infected with H5N1, Miller said. “We’re being just very cautious. We’re treating it very seriously.”
Test results, sent to the French Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh, were expected by early next week, she said. A cross-check of the results would be sent to the Pasteur Institute in Paris or another WHO-affiliated lab, she said.
The 3-year-old girl, also from Tuol Prik, died Tuesday at a hospital in Phnom Penh.
“Preliminary (test) results suggested that she tested positive for H5N1,” Miller said Thursday.
If confirmed, the girl would be Cambodia’s fifth fatality from the disease since the start of 2005, and the first this year. According to WHO statistics, 103 people in eight countries, mostly in Asia, have died from the virus. Most human infections have been linked to direct contact with infected birds.
Poultry had been dying since February in the area around Tuol Prik, according to Miller, who said that according to the girl’s parents, she had been playing with sick birds a few days before she fell ill.
The virus has killed or prompted the slaughter of 200 million birds worldwide since 2003.
Earlier this month, the U.N. agriculture agency said Cambodian officials should expand their surveillance of wild and migratory birds from Southeast Asia to Europe and Africa as part of measures to halt the spread of the H5N1 virus.
“Cambodia, with 60 percent of the land under forest cover and with many wetland areas, is home to millions of wild birds,” the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement. The country is also an important transit point for many birds which migrate between the northern and southern hemispheres, FAO said.
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