Death toll from bird flu rises in Asia
cctv.com 02-04-2004 09:18
More human deaths have been reported from bird flu in Asia. The latest victims of H5N1 avian flu infections are an 18-year-old Vietnamese man and a 7-year -old Thai boy. Both died on Monday. And on Tuesday, the deadly H5N1 strain was confirmed in Indonesia.
Vietnam informed the WHO on Tuesday that three more people have been confirmed with H5N1 infections. A 19-year -old man has recovered and discharged from hospital, while a 20-year-old woman remains hospitalized. The third person, an 18-year-old man, died on Monday. The new cases bring the number of confirmed H5N1 infections to 13 in Vietnam. Nine of them have died. The World Health Organisation representative in Vietnam said they could not rule out human transmission at this stage.
But a WHO official in Thailand says the few confirmed cases THERE show no evidence of human to human transmission.
WHO Representative in Thailand Bjorn Melgaard said, "However, we believe that with the pattern that is accumulating of this epidemic then the human to human transmission will be very limited because the virus seems not to be an efficient virus in terms of moving from one human to another human."
In Thailand, the latest victim was a 7-year -old boy. So far, all four people confirmed infected by the fatal virus in Thailand have died. Meanwhile, Thailand has also declared another 18 suspected cases and says that eleven of those have died.
On Tuesday, Indonesia confirmed that the avian influenza virus in that country was the deadly H5N1. Earlier officials had said the main island of Java and the tourist center of Bali were the worst affected areas. And a 6-year-old boy in Bali has shown clinical symptoms of bird flu.
Eleven countries and regions in Asia have reported cases of bird flu and millions of chickens and ducks have died of the disease or been culled to prevent the virus from spreading. But so far only two countries -- Thailand and Vietnam -- have recorded the virus in humans.
Editor:Xiao Source:CCTV.com
