A second case of human contamination with avian flu has been recorded in Cambodia, the country’s health authorities announced on Friday February 24, specifying that it was the father of an eleven-year-old girl who died on Wednesday.
These two cases are the first recorded in humans in Cambodia since 2014.
The girl, from a remote village in the province of Prey Veng (Southeast), fell ill on February 16, with symptoms of fever, cough and dry throat. She died less than a week later at a children’s hospital in the capital Phnom Penh, the kingdom’s first bird flu-related death in nine years.
Twelve people who had contact with the girl were tested on Thursday and one result came back “positive for H5N1”said the Ministry of Health. “It’s regarding (his) father”: 49 years old, he has no symptoms, said the ministry.
Cambodia has launched research to detect “the source of infections”. Dead wild birds were found near a lake near the village where the affected family lives.
In Cambodia, 58 cases have been detected over the past twenty years, for 38 deaths. These new cases come as, since the end of 2021, Europe has been struggling with its worst epizootic of avian flu, a virus which is also circulating on the American continent.
457 deaths in 2022 worldwide
The virus can be transmitted to humans, most often by direct contact with infected farmed poultry.
In early February, the World Health Organization (WHO) called for vigilance following cases detected in mammals, such as foxes, otters and sea lions.
The UN agency nevertheless wanted to be reassuring, assessing “risk to humans as low”. Over the past two decades, there have been 868 confirmed cases of H5N1 in humans with 457 deaths including just one last year, according to WHO data.
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