Cambodia confirms new bird flu case

December 12, 2008

A new outbreak of bird flu in Cambodia has infected a 19-year-old local man, the Cambodian government and the UN health agency said Friday.

The outbreak occurred in Kandal province, on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh, and is the first confirmed infection of the deadly H5N1 virus in Cambodia this year, the ministry of health and World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a joint statement.

The statement said the man began to show bird flu symptoms of fever, cough, muscle aches and a sore throat on November 28, and was being treated in Phnom Penh's Calmette hospital after tests confirmed his infection.

"At this point, there's no information on further spread but we're awaiting the results of today's investigation," the WHO's Dr. Michael O'Leary told AFP.

Cambodia's ministry of agriculture was conducting an investigation Friday into poultry deaths around the village where the man was infected, while the ministry of health was examining people in the area.

It is the eighth confirmed case of bird flu spreading to a human in Cambodia. All previous cases in the country have died, but O'Leary was hopeful the man would survive.

"Roughly two thirds of confirmed bird flu cases around the world have died." O'Leary said.

The previous recorded bird flu infection of a person in the country occurred last year, when a 13-year-old girl died of the virus.

The WHO says the deadly H5N1 strain has killed nearly 250 people, mostly in Southeast Asia, since 2003.