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Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
FAO: Source of bird flu that caused human death in Nigeria not known
LAGOS, Nigeria:
International health experts probing Nigeria's first recorded death from the bird flu virus have not been able to determine the source of the infection, a senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization said Saturday.
All the team found was that the chicken which caused the infection that killed a 22-year-old woman on Jan. 17 was purchased from a live bird market in Nigeria's biggest city of Lagos just before Christmas, said Tony Forman, leader of the U.N. team of experts helping Nigeria in the probe.
It was not clear how the chicken contracted bird flu.
"It's been a long time now. The prospects for determining where this came from is now virtually impossible," Forman, a bird flu expert with the FAO in Rome, told The Associated Press by phone from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, before the team's departure late Saturday.
Nigeria reported Africa's first cases of the deadly H5N1 virus a year ago. Following a fresh outbreak in January, health authorities announced that a 22-year-old woman who had slaughtered chicken to prepare a meal died of the virus.
Nigerian health officials said her 52-year-old mother had also died of similar symptoms earlier in January. But preliminary tests on tissue samples taken from the mother did not indicate she died of the H5N1 virus, Forman said, adding that the World Health Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control were conducting further investigations on her case.
Bird flu has so far been reported in poultry in 19 of Nigeria's 36 states.
The poultry market serving Lagos, the biggest city in Africa's most populous country of 140 million people, is widely distributed with birds coming in from all over the country, Forman said.
"As is common with cases in many developing countries where poultry is sold in live bird markets, chances exist for infection," he added.
The greatest risk of infection lie with slaughtering and preparing the carcass of birds for food, he said.
Bird flu has killed at least 165 people worldwide, though most victims were infected directly by sick birds. The virus is difficult for humans to catch, though scientists fear a mutation could make it easier for the virus to be transmitted between people, possibly sparking a pandemic.
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LAGOS, Nigeria:
International health experts probing Nigeria's first recorded death from the bird flu virus have not been able to determine the source of the infection, a senior official of the Food and Agriculture Organization said Saturday.
All the team found was that the chicken which caused the infection that killed a 22-year-old woman on Jan. 17 was purchased from a live bird market in Nigeria's biggest city of Lagos just before Christmas, said Tony Forman, leader of the U.N. team of experts helping Nigeria in the probe.
It was not clear how the chicken contracted bird flu.
"It's been a long time now. The prospects for determining where this came from is now virtually impossible," Forman, a bird flu expert with the FAO in Rome, told The Associated Press by phone from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, before the team's departure late Saturday.
Nigeria reported Africa's first cases of the deadly H5N1 virus a year ago. Following a fresh outbreak in January, health authorities announced that a 22-year-old woman who had slaughtered chicken to prepare a meal died of the virus.
Nigerian health officials said her 52-year-old mother had also died of similar symptoms earlier in January. But preliminary tests on tissue samples taken from the mother did not indicate she died of the H5N1 virus, Forman said, adding that the World Health Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control were conducting further investigations on her case.
Bird flu has so far been reported in poultry in 19 of Nigeria's 36 states.
The poultry market serving Lagos, the biggest city in Africa's most populous country of 140 million people, is widely distributed with birds coming in from all over the country, Forman said.
"As is common with cases in many developing countries where poultry is sold in live bird markets, chances exist for infection," he added.
The greatest risk of infection lie with slaughtering and preparing the carcass of birds for food, he said.
Bird flu has killed at least 165 people worldwide, though most victims were infected directly by sick birds. The virus is difficult for humans to catch, though scientists fear a mutation could make it easier for the virus to be transmitted between people, possibly sparking a pandemic.
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