Fourteenth death from bird flu in Vietnam this year reported
HANOI - A 69-year-old man has died of bird flu in Vietnam, the fourteenth fatality from the disease in the country this year, and another is in critical condition, health officials said. The director of northern Vietnam's Thai Binh provincial hospital, Pham Van Diu, told AFP that the 69-year-old died on February 23.
"He was hospitalised on the 19th, he tested positive for bird flu on the 22nd and died on the 23rd," Diu said.
The man died in the province's Tien Xuong district, where a 45-year-old man in another village died on January 9 after testing positive for the H5N1 virus, he said.
Meanwhile a 21-year-old man, also from Thai Binh province, is in a critical condition in Hanoi's Institute of Tropical Diseases.
"Today he is still in a very critical condition and maybe he could die," said professor Le Thang Ha of the institute.
With the latest fatality, 34 people have died in Vietnam since late 2003 in several outbreaks of the disease. Another 12 have died in Thailand.
Thirty-five of Vietnam's 64 provinces and cities have been hit by bird flu this year and more than 1.5 million poultry have been destroyed in a bid to stop the disease.
Fourteen of the provinces and cities have not registered any cases of bird flu in poultry for three weeks, according to official figures.
Delegates from more than 20 countries and organisations held a conference on avian influenza in Ho Chi Minh City last week.
The World Health Organisation's regional director Shigeru Omi warned at the outset of the three-day meeting of "the gravest possible danger of a pandemic."
During the meeting, Vietnam vowed to implement a nationwide overhaul of the poultry industry as part of efforts to stamp out bird flu.
Agence France Presse - February 27, 2005.
Vietnam alarmed about bird flu cases in northern province
HANOI - Vietnamese health officials on Monday raised alarms about a northern province where the latest bird flu death was reported, along with another confirmed infection and two suspected cases of the disease.
Officials confirmed on Sunday that a 69-year-old man from northern Thai Binh province had died from bird flu, making him the 14th person to die from the disease in the country's most recent outbreak over the past nine weeks.
Overall, bird flu has killed 46 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia since surfacing in mass outbreaks in Asian poultry farms in December 2003.
The disease has not yet proven to be easily spread among people, as it is among chickens, but health experts fear it could mutate and spark a global pandemic that could kill millions.
The latest victim, who died last Wednesday, had eaten chicken with his family during Lunar New Year festivities earlier this month, health officials said.
None of his family have reported symptoms, but officials expressed concerns about controlling the disease in Thai Binh province.
"We are very worried about the bird flu. Thai Binh is an agriculture province with many farmer families involved in backyard poultry farming. It's therefore very difficult to deal with. The war on bird flu is very complicated,'' said Pham Van Diu, director of the Preventive Medicine Center of northern Thai Binh province.
Last week, Vietnam reported that a 21-year-old man from the same province had tested positive for the deadly disease.
He is currently in critical condition in Hanoi's Bach Mai Hospital, hospital officials there said.
Tests are being conducted on his 14-year-old sister, who is also suspected of having contracted the virus.
Officials are also running tests on a second suspected case - a 36-year-old man also from Thai Binh province.
Last week, health experts and representatives from 28 nations convened in Ho Chi Minh City to discuss long-term strategies for fighting the deadly virus, which has re-emerged in the region after devastating the poultry industry throughout Asia early last year.
Experts said the H5N1 virus is now entrenched in the region and international efforts should concentrate on containing the disease, minimising the risk of transmission from poultry to people.
Health experts have warned that the longer the virus remains in the environment, the greater the chance it will mutate into a highly infectious form that can be passed easily among humans.
The Associated Press - February 28, 2005.
Human to Human transmission in Thai Binh Vietnam ?
Vietnamese officials confirmed on Sunday that a 69-year-old man has died from bird flu, the 14th person to die from the disease this year.
The man, from northern Thai Binh province, was admitted to the provincial hospital on Feb. 19 with classic bird flu symptoms of high fever and breathing difficulties, said Pham Van Diu, director of Thai Binh Provincial Preventive Medicine Center…
Relatives of the latest victim said his whole family had eaten chicken, a traditional dish, during Lunar New Year festivities earlier this month, Diu said. None of them have reported any illness.
The death of the 69M from confirmed H5N1 extends the Thai Binh geographical cluster to at least 4 confirmed cases this year. The first case was the middle brother of the familial cluster that involved 3 brothers. There has not been a confirmation of the youngest brother, who was initially positive according to media reports. However, his older brothers were confirmed positive for H5N1 and both had symptoms. The index case in that cluster died, although he was from Hanoi and not Thai Binh. These cases were last month.
Within the past few days of this month there were three more cases from Thai Binh. Two were siblings, and the older brother is in critical condition. He appears to have developed symptoms earlier, which would create another bimodal distribution, the 11th in 11 clusters. Bimodal distributions make a common course less likely. Media reports are mixed on who had a blood pudding meal other than the index case. However, like the index case last month which also involved blood pudding, it is an unlikely source because some who ate the meal did not get sick, and those who developed symptoms did so at different times.
As noted above, there also is no obvious source for the recently reported fatal H5N1 infection. There have been additional clusters which are lacking a bird source for the index case. A similar cluster in Thai Binh was also reported a year ago. The index case was a teacher and had no known bird contact.
The lack of an identifiable source, coupled with the large number of cases with bimodal distribution, suggests that human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is much more common than indicated in comments to and by the media.
Recombinomics - February 27, 2005.
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