At 26, the woman in Thailand who died of bird flu earlier this month probably contracted the disease from her daughter, the researchers and Thai officials announced today. So far, the World Health Organization (WHO) scientists are cautiously optimistic that this is not the beginning of a major epidemic.
The researchers say that the woman who lived in the Bangkok area, returned to a rural village in northern Thailand to care for his sick daughter. The girl lived with her aunt and probably acquired the virus from local chickens. She was cremated before researchers could take samples of tissue that could confirm his illness. But the mother's tissue samples were positive for H5N1. So far, says virologist Klaus Stöhr of the WHO, the Thai authorities have detected no increase in respiratory diseases among the villagers or health workers who treated patients. However, aunt and son were also sick and are investigated as possible cases of human to human transmission.
Limited human to human transmission of bird flu has been documented in the past. This cluster, too, seems to be a case of "nonsustained transmission, dead-end," Stöhr said, this does not constitute a greater threat. But the worst scenario - that the virus has mutated into a more dangerous form that could trigger a pandemic - can not be definitively excluded until the WHO Collaborating Center in Atlanta analyzed new samples from Thailand more later this week
meanwhile, many global health groups call for greater vaccination of South Asian poultry farms in order to encircle the dangerous virus. To keep the virus at bay, governments should be vaccinated not only slaughter poultry flocks, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health in a statement September 28th. "It has been demonstrated that the use of these vaccines not only protects the healthy birds of the disease, but also reduces the load of virus excreted by the infected birds and thus the risk of transmission to other birds and human beings, "said the statement.
China and Indonesia already have vaccination programs. But Thailand and other countries do not do so, partly because poultry exporters fear importing countries will ban products from vaccinated birds, which do not exhibit symptoms of the flu, but can still carry the virus.
Related Sites
the declaration FAO
WHO avian influenza website
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