Pakistan: Human H5N1 Cluster December 2007

[HenryN]

Re: Pakistan: December 18+, WHO Begins Investigations

Pakistan still probing human transmission in bird flu: ministry <!-- END HEADLINE -->
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Pakistan's health ministry said it was still investigating whether there was human transmission in the country's first death from bird flu.
It said initials tests by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which sent a team here last week, had ruled it out but that Pakistan had sent samples to Geneva -- the WHO's headquarters -- for further confirmation.
Scientists fear that if the virus were passed from one person to another, rather than from infected birds, it might indicate a mutation that could lead to a global pandemic with the potential to kill millions.
"In their preliminary tests the WHO team excluded suspected human-to-human transmission, but we have sent the samples to Geneva for further confirmation," health ministry spokesman Oriya Maqbool Jan told AFP.
The WHO team was sent after the ministry announced the death of a man who was one of six people infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus in North West Frontier Province along the Afghanistan border.
A brother of the victim also died before being tested for the virus. Both had worked on a cull of infected poultry.
"We have been very closely monitoring the situation," said Rafiqal Hasan Usmani, the animal husbandry commissioner. "There has been no new outbreak."
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 200 people worldwide, mostly in Southeast Asia, since late 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071224/wl_sthasia_afp/healthflupakistan_071224084627&printer=1;_ylt=Aj6AeZxSdGbfFp4DUVbLZnnuOrgF

[HenryN]

Re: Pakistan: Human H5N1 Cluster December 2007

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="98%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD></TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="99%" align=center border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>WHO says human-to-human bird-flu transmission unlikely in Pakistan </TD></TR><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width="83%">Posted on : 2007-12-24 | Author : DPA
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<TABLE cellSpacing=2 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD>Islamabad - The World Health Organization (WHO) has all but ruled out human-to-human transmission of avian influenza among nine Pakistanis who contracted the virus last month, one of whom became the country's first bird-flu fatality, a health official said Monday. While retests of blood samples were still to be conducted at a WHO laboratory in Geneva, investigators who were in Islamabad last week said they did not believe H5N1, the strain of avian influenza that can be deadly in humans, was passed among the nine people in the North-West Frontier Province, six of whom are blood relatives.

"Since there are no symptoms, no new cases or correlation among these people, they say it's not human-to-human bird flu but maybe bird-to-human," said Maqbool Jan Abbasi, a bird-flu spokesman for Pakistan's Health Ministry.

He said 63 people who were in contact with the nine patients tested negative for the virus and that a final report on the findings would be released next week.

The cases began in late November when a man involved in the culling of suspected sick birds outside the city of Peshawar contracted bird flu, followed by one of his brothers who later died from the virus.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/163757.html#

Human-to-human transmission is extremely rare but has occurred among family members in Indonesia and Thailand. Last week, WHO said it could not confirm a feared human-to-human transmission involving a 52-year-old man in China.

There have been multiple bird-flu outbreaks among Pakistan's poultry population since 2006, but there had never been a human case until last month.

Globally, bird flu has killed at least 210 people worldwide since 2003. Most human cases of H5N1 are linked to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the virus might mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic that could kill millions of people.
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