- "Other children in the village
played with the dead chickens more than my
- loved one," she told Reuters by
telephone. "Why are they not sick, and why
- did my daughter die?"
-
- Hello, Jeff -
-
- The Cambodian girl's mother lamented
that she could not
- understand why other children did not
become infected with H5N1. She stated
- that all of the children were playing
with the dead chickens but only her
- daughter took ill and died.
-
- The people in Asia have been hearing
about bird flu since 1997 and human
- cases since 2003. WHY would any mother
sit and watch children playing with
- dead chickens some 9 years into a bird
flu outbreak and some 3 years after
- human cases?
-
- Haven't they heard that people contract
bird flu by contact with sick birds?
- Why would any parent allow a child to
play with dead birds? This does not
- make sense. No wonder this virus cannot
be contained.
-
- The stupidity on the part of parents
who allow children to play with dead
- birds is putting us all in danger. As
long as the virus circulates the globe we
- are at risk of a pandemic.
-
- Patricia Doyle
-
-
- Bird Flu Kills Girl In Cambodia
-
- (Reuters) Bird flu has killed a young
girl in Cambodia, the first human victim of the virus in the poor southeast
Asian nation in almost a year, while China said yesterday a woman in the
city of Shanghai had died from it.
-
- Jordan became the latest Middle East
country hit by an outbreak of the virulent H5N1 virus in poultry, but said
no people had been infected.
-
- Bird flu, which has spread from Asia
to the Middle East, Africa and Europe, remains essentially an animal disease
but can infect people who come into contact with sick poultry.
-
- Health experts fear the virus will mutate
enough to pass easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which
millions could die.
-
- The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed
the death of the girl in Cambodia, taking the known death toll from the
virus to 104 since it re-emerged in Asia in late 2003. The WHO had no immediate
comment on the death in China. Mon Puthy, aged three, who lived in a village
in Kampong Speu province about 60 kilometres west of Phnom Penh in Cambodia,
had been in contact with sick and dying chickens, officials said. She died
on Tuesday.
-
- Her death took Cambodia's human death
toll from bird flu to five. The country's last victim was a 20-year-old
woman who died in a Vietnamese hospital in April 2005.
-
- Seven other people in the village who
had either been in contact with the girl or sick poultry were showing some
signs of fever, although there was no cause for panic, local WHO spokesman
Megge Miller said.
-
- "It looks like another one of those
isolated incidents. There aren't any alarm bells at the moment," she
said.
-
- Mon Puthy's 23-year-old mother, Choeun
Sok Ny, said she still had no idea what had killed her daughter, an indication
that bird flu public education campaigns in one of Asia's poorest nations
still have a long way to go.
-
- "Other children in the village played
with the dead chickens more than my loved one," she told Reuters by
telephone. "Why are they not sick, and why did my daughter die?"
-
- China's Health Ministry confirmed that
a 29-year-old woman in the eastern city of Shanghai had died of bird flu,
the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
-
- The woman, surnamed Li, was a migrant
worker who was initially said to have died of "pneumonia of unknown
cause". The city government said it suspected bird flu on Thursday.
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle, DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases"
message board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
|
