Good morning, Henry! You probably already know all about this article, but when I saw it I thought of you. Scary news!
Bird flu likely jumped between humans: study
CTV.ca News Staff
A Thai girl who died of bird flu last year likely transmitted the disease to her mother and aunt, concludes a worrying new study.
That would mark the first documented case of human-to-human transmission of the virus.
People normally catch bird flu from infected birds, usually chickens and ducks. Health experts have been worried that the H5N1 bird flu virus could one day mutate into a form that passes easily between people, perhaps leading to a major flu pandemic to rival the Spanish flu of 1918.
But medical investigators caution that even with this latest finding, there is no evidence that mutation has yet happened.
"It was reassuring that no further transmission of the virus has been detected," noted the study from an international team of scientists led by the Public Health Ministry in Thailand.
The team's report is due to be published later this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Journal released the study early to coincide with a conference given by The University of Michigan Bioterrorism Preparedness Initiative.
There have been other instances in which doctors suspected that bird flu had spread between humans, but it was always hard to be sure if the victims had not just been exposed to the same source of the virus.
In this case, however, the evidence suggests that the 11-year-old Thai girl transmitted the disease to her mother and aunt.
The girl was hospitalized last September with a fever, cough and sore throat. She died the next day. Thai health officials believed she contracted the virus from infected free-ranging chickens in the house that she and her aunt shared.
Her mother, a garment factory worker who travelled from another province to care for her daughter, had no contact with birds.
The mother spent 16 to 18 hours with her daughter in the hospital on Sept. 7 and 8, hugging and kissing her. She fell ill herself on Sept. 11, dying 12 days after her daughter. An autopsy showed the mother tested positive for bird flu.
Investigators originally thought the aunt had acquired the virus from the same source as the girl. But it typically takes two to 10 days for someone to become ill after exposure to an infected bird and the aunt had gotten rid of the chickens days before the girl became ill.
The aunt, who had cared for the hospitalized girl for 12 to 13 hours, became sick 17 days after her last exposure to poultry, making it likely that she got her illness from the girl as well.
The aunt survived.
The fact that the virus did not spread further suggests that the virus has not adapted to efficient human spread, the Ungchusak team said, adding: "But this should not be a rationale for complacency."
In a Journal editorial, Klaus Stohr of the World Health Organization said the world must put up safeguards now to stop the illness.
Vietnam reported two more avian flu deaths on Saturday, bringing the human toll to nine in three weeks.
The string of deaths -- which include five this week alone -- has prompted the World Health Organization to ring alarm bells about the high fatality rate. More than 70 per cent of those infected in this latest outbreak have died.
Last week, Vietnamese officials investigated another suspected person-to-person bird flu case involving two brothers in Hanoi. But there are now reports that the brothers all drank raw duck blood at a family feast.
Deputy Health Minister Tran Chi Liem was quoted in the Nguoi Lao Dong (Labourer) paper as saying the trio had dined on duck before one of them died of the H5N1 bird flu strain, a fact backed up by the WHO.
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