Five-year-old latest fatality
NST, 10 Dec 2005

BANGKOK, Fri. --- A five-year-old boy became Thailand’s second bird flu fatality in two months, while Vietnam announced two new outbreaks and China its fifth human cases amid concern that infection rates could soar this winter.

Thai health authorities said today that lab tests showed the boy died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which international experts fear could trigger a human pandemic if it mutates into a form easily passed between people.

The boy fell ill with fever, stomach pains and vomiting on Nov 25 at his home in a district of Nakhon Nayok province district, about 70km northeast of the capital of Bangkok, Public Health Minister Phinij Jarusombat said. He was hospitalized nine days later and died on Wednesday.

Health officials believe the boy had contact with the faeces of chickens belonging to an uncle living next door. But his parents failed to give doctors a “clear history of his contact with chickens”, Phinij said in a statement.

Doctors had treated him as a normal pneumonia case until just hours before he died, after bird flu suspicions were aroused.

The cause of death was not yet confirmed by the World Health Organization.

The boy’s case is Thailand’s fourth reported infection since October, and the second death. They are Thailand’s first new human cases of the virus in a year, and coincided with fresh outbreaks in poultry in several parts of the country.

The WHO has confirmed 69 bird flu deaths and 135 infections since late 2003 when the virus began sweeping Asia, and most of them have been traced to contact with infected birds. But experts fear H5N1 could change and become a virulent new form of flu that could traverse the globe.

In Vietnam, the Agriculture Ministry today reported new outbreaks in two more provinces which had killed or forced authorities to destroy some 10,600 poultry.

Meanwhile, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that a farmer in northeast China tested positive, but recovered after being hospitalized. --- AP.