Human transmission sends bird flu fears
flying By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - In an effort to thwart a global panic,
international health agencies and government officials
are cautioning against fears that could arise from the
first probable case of human-to-human transmission of
bird flu in Thailand.
Since the death of a
26-year-old Thai woman last week, the World Health
Organization (WHO) has jumped to action, and Thai health
and agriculture officials have met to decide what to do
next in their battle to eradicate the disease. Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra also called an emergency
meeting on avian influenza on Wednesday.
Despite
solid evidence that the case is one that could set off a
human pandemic, the finding is significant because the
deadly H5N1 virus could become a public health threat if
it gains the capacity to pass from person to person.
The WHO's tone - in the wake of an announcement
on Tuesday to explain the death of the Thai woman - was
in marked contrast to the alarm it raised in January,
when this year's first outbreak of bird flu was raging
across Asia.
At that time, the Geneva-based
United Nations health agency warned of a pandemic that
could be worse than AIDS, killing millions, if the H5N1
strain of avian flu were to mutate and be passed from
one person to another. No human being, the WHO pointed
out, had immunity against this potential new virus.
On Tuesday, however, the WHO's representative in
Thailand, Dr Kumara Rai, said, "There is no reason to
panic.
"Based on evaluations so far, there is no
significant public health threat," Rai told Inter Press
Service. "There is no evidence of mutation or
reassortment of the virus."
To be doubly sure,
the WHO will send specimens of the bird-flu virus that
probably led to the death of the Thai woman, Pranee
Thonchan, to its collaborating center in the United
States.
The WHO's call for calm came shortly
after the Thai government announced here that it had
detected the first probable case of a person infecting
another with avian influenza.
According to Thai
authorities, Pranee had been infected by the avian-flu
virus while looking after her 11-year-old daughter, who
had been hospitalized with the disease. Her daughter,
Sakuntala, died on September 8 in the north-central
province of Khampaeng Phet.
Pranee, who died of
the disease on September 20, had been away in another
part of the country when Sakuntala fell ill and had
returned to care for her soon after.
Pranee
could have contracted the virus "from the sick daughter,
[whom] she was taking care of very closely at the
hospital", the Thai government explained in a statement.
The deaths brought to 10 the number of Thais who
have died because of the H5N1 virus during its two
outbreaks this year. Of these, nine people died after
coming into direct contact with infected poultry - the
usual source of infection. But Pranee had contact only
with an ill child, not any birds, according to the WHO.
Yet Dr Rai and Thai health authorities are
drawing attention to other details surrounding the death
of the mother and daughter to portray the first case of
human-to-human transmission as more of a one-off event.
No health workers in the hospital where the mother
contracted the disease have been infected, they say,
suggesting the possibility that the virus was weak.
"This shows that the efficiency of the
transmission of the probable virus was low," said Rai.
"If it was efficient, it would have been worse."
But that is no reason for complacency toward
controlling the spread of the lethal virus, declared the
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). Tuesday's
announcement reinforced the need to control and
eradicate the virus, He Changchui, FAO's regional
representative for Asia and the Pacific, said at a press
conference.
The FAO wants to see "further
evidence and information to help us understand if and
what may have changed in the biology and genetic make-up
of the incriminated virus to give rise to this probable
human-to-human transmission", said He.
On
Monday, the Rome-based UN food agency described the
bird-flu epidemic in Asia as a "crisis of global
importance" and warned that the virus will "not probably
be eradicated in the near future".
Since July,
six Asian countries have reported outbreaks, including
China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Vietnam, the other Asian country as badly hit by the
virus as Thailand, has had 20 deaths due to the disease.
The scale of the spread is less than what it was
during the first major outbreak early this year, when
eight Asian countries were hit, including two-thirds of
Thailand's 76 provinces. In an effort to contain avian
flu at that time, more than 100 million chickens were
slaughtered or died due to the disease. Thailand, the
world's fourth-largest chicken exporter, culled more
than 40 million birds during that episode.
Avian
influenza, which is transmitted through the air and is
released in nasal secretion and the feces of infected
birds, caused alarm in 1997 after an outbreak of the
H5N1 strain of the virus killed six people in Hong Kong.
In August this year, China's state-run Xinhua
News Agency reported that the H5N1 virus had been found
in pigs, indicating the virus was no longer limited to
the poultry family as had been the case hitherto. The
account alarmed public health experts, since this
reported first case meant that the avian-flu virus had
mutated into a form that could lead to human-to-human
infections.
