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H5N1 claims another life in Cambodia

Bird flu remains "a real and present danger" across Cambodia, a senior UN official warned yesterday, one day after the virulent H5N1 virus claimed the life of a sixth victim in the Southeast Asian nation.

The 12-year-old boy from the southeastern province of Prey Veng died from bird flu on Wednesday, two weeks after a three-year-old girl succumbed in a village southwest of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Tests conducted by the Pasteur Institute confirmed that the boy's cause of death was the H5N1 virus, said Megge Miller, a WHO epidemiologist.

She said several chickens and ducks had died in and near the boy's backyard over a 10-day period before he fell sick on March 29.

The boy was collecting them from around the house and taking them to one of his relatives who would then prepare the poultry for eating, she said.

The two recent fatalities "bring home yet again that bird flu is a real and present danger in Cambodia," said Douglas Gardner, country representative of the UN Development Program.

"We would all like to think that these deaths have not been in vain, but should spur on immediate action and urgent distribution of vital information," said Gardner, who also coordinates all of the UN's agencies in Cambodia.

He made the comments at a signing ceremony for US$765,000 in aid from the Australian government to the UN Children's Fund to implement a bird flu awareness campaign in Cambodia. The funds will be used to produce health education posters and radio and television spots.

Rodney Hatfield, the UNICEF representative, also warned that the traditional Cambodian New Year holiday beginning later next week will prove a critical period for the task of curbing bird flu because of major population movement during the celebrations.

This will mean more handling and transport of poultry, and a reduced administrative force as staff take their holidays, he said, adding that vacationing children also risk being exposed to the virus.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has found H5N1 in more than half the samples taken from chickens smuggled from China, raising fears of a resurgence of the disease, officials said yesterday.

Authorities said smuggling of infected poultry could undo a massive vaccination program in Vietnam, which has not seen an outbreak in poultry flocks or any new human cases for more than four months.

Truong Van Dung, director of Vietnam's National Veterinary Institute, said that 16 of the 30 blood samples taken last month from Chinese poultry seized near the northern border tested positive for the H5N1 virus.

"We are now conducting more tests on 40 more samples," Dung said by telephone.

Authorities in northern border provinces Lang Son and Quang Ninh have seized more than 45 tonnes of live chickens and more than 150,000 eggs smuggled in from China.

Vietnam imposed a ban on Chinese chickens last year to prevent a resurgence of the H5N1 virus that devastated the country's poultry industry and has so far killed 42 Vietnamese, who mostly caught the disease from infected chickens.
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