Mystery disease not Sars

2004-11-14 14:48

Hong Kong - Hong Kong health chiefs ruled out on Sunday Sars or bird flu in the death of a youngster among 24 hospital patients who suddenly went down with a mystery respiratory complaint.

A spokesperson for the Hospital Authority said tests had showed the illness was not related to the killer severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) nor the deadly H5N1 strain of flu, both of which have claimed many lives here in recent years.

"There is no positive link to those diseases," said the spokeswoman. "We are now conducting cell culture tests to see if we can identify why all these children were infected at once."

Alarm bells rang on Friday when an 11-year-old girl died after contracting an upper respiratory tract infection. Another 23 children in her unit, which gives long-term care to youngsters with severe mental and physical disabilities, also contracted the disease.

Hong Kong is sensitive to all such outbreaks as the former British colony witnessed the world's first death from SARS in early 2003.

Sars, which first surfaced in southern China about two years ago, killed almost 800 people, mostly in Hong Kong and China, in a worldwide outbreak that infected more than 8 000 last year.

Hong Kong was also where the H5N1 bird flu first mutated into a form lethal to humans, killing six people in 1997.

The strain was responsible for the deaths of 32 people in Vietnam and Thailand earlier this year during outbreaks that affected most of Southeast and East Asia.

- AFP