Mutations may trigger pandemic

2004-01-27 08:16

Bangkok - The bird flu virus sweeping through Asia has mutated since 1997, when six people died in Hong Kong in the first documented case of the virus jumping to humans.

This warning by the World Health Organisaton follows the news that the region's eighth bird flu death, on Tuesday, has made this year's outbreak the deadliest on record.

Although there has been no evidence yet of human-to-human transmission in the latest outbreak, health officials are concerned the disease might mutate further and link with regular influenza to create a form that could trigger the next human flu pandemic.

"This is now spreading too quickly for anybody to ignore it," said WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley in Manila, Philippines.

The feared mutations complicate the search for a vaccine. The virus strain isolated from the 1997 outbreak can no longer be used as the key to producing the medicine, the health organisation said.

The crisis is deepening by the day, having jumped to humans in two countries, with additional states in the region announcing infections in their poultry stocks.

A six-year-old Thai boy died of bird flu in hospital on Tuesday, his doctor said, in the second confirmed death from the disease in Thailand.

"He died at 10:00 of severe pneumonia after he was admitted on January 15 following a referral from hospitals in his province Sukhothai," said Chusak Uaevichitpochana from Bhudachinaraj Hospital in central Phitsanulok province.

Chusak said the boy's mother died earlier this month in Sukhothai but he could not confirm whether she also had bird flu.

Thai children

The health ministry said on Monday that the boy was among two confirmed and five suspected cases of bird flu in Thai children. Five adults suspected of having the disease had already died, it said.

This brings the total death toll to eight, following six deaths in Vietnam.

Pakistan on Monday joined countries affected by the disease, after Indonesia did on Sunday. Laboratory tests confirmed that the disease had also spread to Laos, a Laotian agriculture official said Tuesday.

Singkham Phounvisay, director of the country's Livestock Department, said one sample sent to a laboratory in Hanoi, Vietnam, had tested positive for the deadly disease.

The tests were conducted after hundreds of chickens died on farms, most of them in the area around the Lao capital of Vientiane.

Eight other governments have reported some strain of bird flu: Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Officials in some countries claim their version of bird flu is milder than the one that has jumped to humans.

Tens of millions of chicken and other poultry have been infected, sparking mass culls at farms across the region to contain the virus, and tight controls on poultry imports. South Korea alone has killed 24 million chickens and ducks.

Officials in Bangkok said they were investigating whether the virus might be carried by migratory birds, a possible source for spreading the disease from farm to farm, and country to country.

The Seoul-based Korea Centre for Disease Control said that the bird flu is likely to have entered each affected country through a different channel.

'Played with chickens'

The Thai death announced on Monday was a boy, Captan Boonmanut, who became infected after he played with chickens in his village in the central Kanchanaburi province. He died on Sunday night in a Bangkok hospital.

Pakistan said it detected a form of bird flu in its chicken population, killing up to 3.5 million birds. However, a commissioner for livestock husbandry said it was not a strain of bird flu that can spread to humans.

"We have confirmed this. The strand that jumps to humans is not in them," commissioner Rafaqat Hussain Raja said.

The reported Pakistani strains differ from the H5N1 strain blamed for the human fatalities in the current outbreak. However, WHO said on its website that other similar strains also have been known to infect humans.

South Korea and Taiwan also have sought to allay concerns by saying the bird flu strains affecting their poultry industries are distinct from the one that has killed people.

Officials in South Korea said, however, that it remains to be seen whether their strain can jump to humans. - AP/AFP

- SAPA