WHO: Bird flu not behind death in Cambodia's influenza outbreak
- From: "Chim" <ChimS1@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Jul 2005 06:18:15 -0700
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - The death of a 20-year-old Cambodian man
was due to an outbreak of human influenza - not bird flu as some had
feared - a World Health Organization official said Thursday.
Test results showed Meas Met had the H3N2 type of the influenza A virus
- not the H5N1 bird flu strain that has devastated poultry stocks and
killed at least 54 people in Southeast Asia, WHO epidemiologist Megge
Miller said.
The H3N2 virus commonly circulates among humans, Miller said.
"It's definitely not an avian strain at all," she said.
The victim, from an orphanage in the capital, Phnom Penh, died Tuesday.
Thirteen others from the orphanage also were hospitalized with flu-like
symptoms, Health Minister Nuth Sokhom said earlier.
All the patients were reported to have eaten chicken before they fell
ill, he said.
Bird flu is usually transmitted through close contact with infected
birds. Properly cooked chicken meat is not believed to pose a health
threat.
Ly Sovann, chief of the disease surveillance bureau at Cambodia's
Health Ministry, said Meas Met died from a respiratory illness but not
from bird flu, and that the others had tested negative for H5N1.
Meas Met's death was the latest fatality in a recent flu outbreak that
killed two infants last month.
Hospitals have become overcrowded with children with respiratory
infections. Tests on some were positive for the Influenza B virus, a
common strain that can cause death but does not have as high a fatality
rate as bird flu.
Influenza type A or B cause epidemics almost every year around the
world, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, which estimates that an average of about 36,000 Americans
die from flu complications each year.
Cambodia's latest flu outbreak has strained the impoverished country's
grossly inadequate health care system, forcing at least one hospital to
put three or four children to a bed.
07/07/05 04:42 EDT
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