THE GUARDIAN
•Concerns as virus appear to be spreading between humans, after fears killer disease was behind cluster of cases in Cambodia
There are concerns that another pandemic is on the prowl as bird flu spreads and virus appears to be spreading between humans, after fears killer virus was behind cluster of cases in Cambodia.
Fears of another viral pandemic were ramped up last week after tests revealed the father of an 11-year-old girl who died from bird flu in the Southeast Asian nation had also got infected.
Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is “really concerned” the current bird flu outbreak may now be spreading between people for the first time in more than 25 years.
The WHO has ordered a new bird flu vaccine to be made in response to the rapid spread of the strain of H5N1 avian influenza causing the current outbreak.
An 11-year-old girl died of bird flu in Cambodia this week, while her father is also infected and 11 others are under observation, with some showing symptoms. Experts are worried the large cluster might mean that the virus has now evolved to be able to be passed from one human to another. While captive and wild birds have been decimated worldwide by the current H5N1 strain there has so far been no evidence that it can pass between mammals.
If the virus has been able to cross the species gap from birds to humans then concern around bird flu and its potential to cause a pandemic will escalate.
No sustained transmission of bird flu has ever occurred but limited human-to-human transmission was reported in Hong Kong in 1997. WHO director of epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, Dr. Sylvie Briand, said that the Cambodian outbreak was causing more alarm than isolated cases that have popped up in the intervening two decades.
“When you have only one case, you imagine that it’s because this case was exposed to animals, either alive or dead. So for us, it means it is a zoonotic infection,” she said, in a statement.
“But when you see that there are a number of potential cases surrounding this initial case, you always wonder what has happened. Is it because maybe the initial case has transmitted the disease to other humans?
“And so we are really concerned about the potential human-to-human transmission coming from this initial spillover from animals. “This is currently the investigation that is ongoing in the contacts of this girl in Cambodia. We are first trying to see if those contacts have H5N1 infection and that’s why we are waiting for the laboratory confirmation of those cases.
“Secondly, once we have this confirmation, we will try to understand if those people have been exposed to animals or if those people have been contaminated by the initial case.”
