Teenage girl confirmed as being latest Thai victim of bird flu
submited by kickingbird at Oct, 25, 2004 18:27 PM from AFP
Source: Henry Niman via flu@coollist.com
BANGKOK : A 14-year-old girl was confirmed on Monday as being the 12th person in Thailand to die this year from bird flu, the country´s health ministry said.
Test results confirmed that the girl from the northern province of Sukhotai, who died six days ago, had the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
"She was on the list of suspected cases after she died after being sick for 11 days," said Charal Trinvuthipong, the director of Thailand´s bird flu centre. "The lab test result found she had H5N1."
At least 19 people have also died of the disease in Vietnam since December last year and millions of birds have died or been culled across Asia.
Six Asian nations have reported a resurgence of the virus amid fears that the disease has become endemic in the region.
Five people have been confirmed as having bird flu in Thailand since the second wave of outbreaks, with four of them having died.
An 11-year-old girl, who was cremated before full tests were carried out, is also listed as a "probable" case and is suspected of passing the disease on to her mother who cared for her in hospital. She also died.
Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra announced a "war" on bird flu for October and told officials that he wanted the country cleared of the disease by the end of the month.
But bird flu was identified in 41 of Thailand´s 76 provinces from October 1 to 22, more than at the start of the month, according to a statement from the bird flu centre.
The country´s agriculture minister was replaced earlier this month in a wide-ranging cabinet reshuffle as he paid the price of failing to halt the spread of the disease in the kingdom.
Thailand will host a ministerial-level regional conference on bird flu next month.
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/041025/kyodo/d85ucq3o0.html
Thailand confirmed Monday that a 14-year-old girl who died on Oct. 19 succumbed to H5N1 avian influenza.
Nitaya Chanruang Mahabhol, spokesman at the Ministry of Public Health, said laboratory tests completed Monday showed the girl, who is believed to have had contact with sick chickens or excrement from the chickens, died 11 days after becoming ill.
The girl, from Sukhothai in the country´s north, is the fourth human victim of the outbreak that began in July and caused H5N1 infection in five people.
The fifth person recovered after hospital treatment and has returned home.
Pawat Sunthrajarn, director general of the communicable disease control department at the ministry, said he does not believe the latest victim had direct contact with the sick chickens at her family home, but that she did possibly come into contact with droppings from the sick chickens.
He added that of 10 chickens the family was raising, five died early this month.
The latest human death brings the H5N1 death toll in Thailand this year to 12 -- the eight other victims died from infections caught during the outbreak that began in January.
The overall death toll rose to 11 on Oct. 3 when a 9-year-old girl who contracted the disease almost a month earlier died.
Nitaya said that girl died in northeastern Thailand.
"She was ill since Sept. 6, but nobody realized that she was infected by the bird flu virus from her chickens at home in Phetchabun Province. She reached a district hospital only on Sept. 27," Nitaya said on Oct. 4.
Eight of 10 chickens her family kept died suspiciously in early September, and her parents slaughtered the other two.
The first victim of the July outbreak was an 18-year-old man who died from the disease in early September and the second was a 26-year-old woman who succumbed Sept. 20.
Her only known contact with the virus was through her 11-year-old daughter -- who died Sept. 8 from severe pneumonia -- and a visit to a village where another confirmed bird flu sufferer lives.
Experts from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said it was a "probable" case of human-to-human infection. Serum samples from the woman´s daughter were being examined to see if she too had the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu also killed 20 people in Vietnam earlier this year.
- GISAID: H5N1 Bird Flu Circulating in Dairy Cows in the United States 16 hours ago
- USCDC: A(H5N1) Bird Flu Response Update 22 hours ago
- USCDC: Avian Influenza A(H5N1) U.S. Situation Update and CDC Activities 7 days ago
- USCDC: Urgent field correction notice 8 days ago
- Joint FAO/WHO/WOAH preliminary assessment of recent influenza A(H5N1) viruses 8 days ago
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