ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan has recorded its first human death from bird flu and five other people have been infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.
Health officials are also investigating a second death from suspected bird flu.
The cases were reported in the North West Frontier Province in late October.
"Six cases were found positive for H5N1 avian influenza virus," the Ministry of Health said in a statement. "Five of them have fully recovered."
The statement said one man with confirmed H5N1 died in hospital and his brother, who had not been tested, has also died. The second death is being investigated.
While Pakistan has registered cases of bird flu in poultry this is the first time it has been reported in humans, Federal Health Secretary Khushnood Akhtar Lashari told Reuters.
The first poultry case appeared in early 2006.
Lashari said no more poultry or human cases had been detected in the last two weeks. A World Health Organisation (WHO) team will arrive in Pakistan in the next few days.
--------------You might remember the recent son-father bird flu case in China. This case raised fears of human to human infection. However, according to this Dec 14th article, it would appear that no one else has become infected.
China said on Friday none of the people who had come into close contact with the two most recent cases of bird flu - a young man who died and his infected father - had contracted the virus.
The 82 people who had close contact with the two were all released from medical observation on Wednesday after they showed no unusual symptoms, health ministry spokesperson Mao Qun'an said.
The dead man, a 24-year-old surnamed Lu, died from avian flu on December 2. His 52-year-old father was confirmed a few days later to have also contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus.
The father was now in a stable condition and showing signs of improvement, according to a health ministry statement on its website.
No comments:
Post a Comment