HANOI: A day after Viet Nam confirmed three people had died of bird flu, three other suspicious deaths remained a mystery on Friday as the country prepared to battle a new outbreak of the disease in humans.

Among the latest possible cases was the 19-year-old brother of a woman from Hau Giang province in the Mekong Delta. She died on August 6 and tested positive for the H5N1 strain that killed 16 people in Viet Nam earlier this year, said Pham Thanh Khoi, director of the provincial health department.

The brother, along with two others in their early 20s from the same province, died suddenly after showing similar symptoms. But no samples were taken from any of them, preventing health officials from determining whether they were infected with the deadly virus, Khoi said on Friday.

Officials are also awaiting the results of samples taken from a 20-year-old woman from Hau Giang province who remains hospitalized, according to the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City.

The World Health Organization confirmed the three suspicious deaths and said the brother had shown more severe symptoms than the sister. The WHO is awaiting government approval to bring a team of epidemiologists into Viet Nam to begin piecing the outbreak together, said Hans Troedsson, head of the organization in Hanoi.

"We have to accept and to recognize that always in the beginning of an outbreak there is information and data missing," he said. "The primary thing is to collect that."

The WHO's regional office in Manila said the greatest risk is a possible mutation of the virus that would allow human-to-human transmission much like a winter flu, "potentially giving rise to a new virus with pandemic potential".

"The WHO's business is not the health of chickens," WHO spokesman Peter Cordingly said. "What does concern us is if this does become a public health issue, and what we are most concerned about, of course, is if there is any sign of human-to-human transmission."

On Thursday, officials confirmed that the woman from Hau Giang province and two children had died from the disease in both the country's north and south between August 2 and August 6.

Among the confirmed cases were a 4-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl from different districts in northern Ha Tay province. They tested positive for the H5 subtype in Hanoi, indicating they died of bird flu. Tests are still being run to determine whether they were infected with the H5N1 strain, said Nguyen Thi Hong Hanh, deputy director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.

In the province, about 50 kilometres west of Hanoi, the 4-year-old began showing symptoms, including a high fever, after the family ate several sick chickens, said Nguyen Hung Muu, director of the provincial health department.

No other family members have become ill, but health officials are continuing to monitor those who ate the poultry and came into contact with the boy, Muu said, adding the entire village has been disinfected.

(Information source: China Daily)
2004/8/14