Unexplained Disease Kills Over 60 Children in Cambodia

July 4, 2012
By PATRICK BARTA
The Wall Street Journal

Cambodian and international health officials said Wednesday they are investigating an unexplained disease that has killed more than 60 children since early April in the small Southeast Asian country.

The Cambodia Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization said in a joint statement that the unknown respiratory disease also involved neurological symptoms, and that only one of 62 children admitted to hospitals with the illness survived. The illness typically began with high fevers followed by respiratory or neurological problems, with rapid deterioration of respiratory functions.

The statement said authorities were first alerted to the disease by physicians at a children's hospital in Phnom Penh, the capital. It said the majority of the cases had come from southern parts of the country, but that there was no apparent clustering of cases so far.

"We can't make any conclusions yet," said Ly Sovann, an official at Cambodia's Ministry of Health reached by phone Wednesday night. "We need to have further investigations," he said, adding, "we are not on alert yet" for wider problems.

"The cause of the disease may not be new, but the scale at which it is occurring has not been observed in recent years," the WHO said in an email sent to The Wall Street Journal. "Possible causes of the disease are being considered but definite identification may take some time."

International health officials have long expressed concern about the emergence of unexplained diseases in poor countries like Cambodia, which suffer from weak medical infrastructure and often lack the diagnostic skills and technology needed to manage potential outbreaks. That same lack of technology, though, could also mean health officials overlook basic features of a disease that could identify it as something treatable.

Global health authorities have tried to step up their involvement in such countries in recent years, especially after outbreaks of avian flu in Asia in the middle of the past decade raised awareness about the risks in countries where medical care is less advanced.

The statement released Wednesday said that neighboring countries had been informed of the disease. World Health Organization officials said they were closely monitoring the situation and providing technical assistance to Cambodia to help in the identification of the illness.