WHO concerned over latest case
NST, 25 May 2006

JAKARTA: Limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu might have occurred in an Indonesian family but there is no evidence the virus has mutated to allow it to pass easily among people, the World Health Organization said.

Seven members of the family from a village in north Sumatra died this month and the WHO and Indonesian health officials are baffled over the source of the H5N1 avian flu virus.

But they say there is no evidence the virus has passed to anyone else outside the initial cluster of up to eight people.

It is the largest family cluster known to date, the WHO has said, and such clusters are looked on with far more suspicious than isolated infections because they raise the possibility the virus might have mutated to transmit efficiently among humans.

That could spark a pandemic, killing millions of people.

“To date, the investigation has found no evidence of spread within the general community and no evidence that efficient human-to-human transmission has occurred”, the WHO said in a statement posted on its website.

It said one of the family members, a 32-year-old father, died on Monday after caring for his ailing son.

The agency said such close contact was considered a possible source of infection.

However, genetic sequencing of the virus --- which would enable scientists to tell if it has mutated --- showed nothing unusual.

Sick poultry has been the source of H5N1 infection for the vast majority of human infections worldwide.

The virus can also infect pigs.

The UN agency, though, was also keen not to play down the seriousness of the case.

“This is the most significant development so far in terms of public health”, Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the West Pacific region of the WHO, said in Manila.

“We have never had a cluster as large as this. We can’t find sick animals in this community and that worries us”.

Limited transmissions between people --- the result of very close and prolonged contact when the sick person is coughing and probably infectious --- are very likely to have occurred before in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. --- Reuters.