Myanmar Reports 1st Human Bird Flu Case
Pastor Dale Morgan
Myanmar Reports 1st Human Bird Flu Case*
The Associated Press
Saturday, December 15, 2007; 4:36 AM
YANGON, Myanmar -- The World Health Organization has confirmed Myanmar's
first human case of bird flu and praised the secretive country for its
quick and open handling of the infection.
The U.N. body and the country's health ministry found that a 7-year-old
girl from Keng Tung in northeastern Myanmar had been infected with the
deadly H5N1 virus, WHO said on its Web site Friday. She has since recovered.
The WHO hailed Myanmar's transparency and swift action in alerting
outside health officials about the case. Myanmar's ruling junta has been
under international fire since September for killing and arresting
pro-democracy protesters, with dissident groups putting the death toll
at about 200.
"They handled it very, very well," said Shima Roy, spokeswoman for the
organization's regional office in New Delhi. "They actually did
house-to-house surveillance, especially in the area where there had been
an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry."
State media reported the girl was hospitalized on Nov. 27 and released
on Dec. 12 in good condition after being treated with the antiviral drug
Tamiflu.
Bird flu has recently resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths
reported in Indonesia and China and fresh outbreaks in poultry plaguing
other countries during the winter months when the virus typically flares.
According to the WHO, there have been 340 cases of bird flu in humans
worldwide since 2003 _ 208 of them fatal.
Experts believe most human victims of the virus were infected through
direct contact with sick birds. Although bird flu is difficult for
humans to catch, experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads
easily among people and spark a flu pandemic.
The young victim, Nan Kham Than, was among four people suspected of
having the virus during an outbreak of the disease in poultry in
mid-November, the state-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
Laboratory tests confirmed that only the girl was infected.
The Health Ministry for 10 days closely monitored 689 persons who were
involved in culling chickens or lived near the affected farms, and found
that no other people were infected, the newspaper said.
Myanmar reported its first bird flu outbreak in March 2006 in the
central part of the country, but until now had reported no human infections.
H5N1 began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, leading to the
death or slaughter of millions of birds.