Cambodia: Update on 4th Human Case #H5N1

[The 35yo male that died, was also from Kong Pisei district.  He was from Preah Nipean commune.]

Excerpts:
An official on the Ministry of Health’s human influenza hotline and a commune chief said yesterday a two-year-old girl from Kampong Speu was diagnosed with H5N1 on Saturday after being admitted to Kantha Bopha hospital in Phnom Penh, where a 15-year-old girl died of the virus last Monday.

Due to less-rigorous monitoring of the disease in other hospitals, the cases seen in Kantha Bopha hospital were likely just the “tip of the iceberg”, said Dr Philippe Buchy, head of the virology unit at the Institut Pasteur du Cambodge, the medical research centre that tested the recent cases. 

Local health officials had buried the burned birds outside the village, sprayed the village and distributed medicine to eradicate the virus, he said.

Officials in Kong Pisei district’s Prey Nhat commune, in Kampong Speu province, the home of the two-year-old confirmed on Saturday to be the fourth case of the year, were pushing similar measures, according to commune chief Chan Sun.

Sun said a lot of poultry in the commune tended to get sick during the dry season, and officials had told villagers not to cook or touch sick or dead birds.  

“They have to burn and bury the dead poultry,” he said. “We have also prohibited poultry buyers who usually come into the commune from buying chickens in the commune for a while until we are sure everything is safe.”

More than 40 chickens at the infected toddler’s house had fallen sick and died, and, as with the other three cases this month, health officials suspect contact with poultry had caused her to become ill.

“Health officials went to the girl’s and her neighbours’ houses this morning to spray and distribute medicines, and they tested some poultry,” Sun said.