Rare case of death from bird flu, the girl had been hospitalized for a week with flu-like symptoms

An 11-year-old girl died in Cambodia of bird flu. This hadn’t happened since 2014.

An 11-year-old girl has died of bird flu in Cambodia. This is an extremely rare case of death in humans following this highly contagious disease in birds. No human death had indeed been recorded since 2014, recalls West France.

The H5N1 epidemic has been present for several months in the world. The girl, from the province of Prey Veng in the south-east of the country, fell ill on February 16, with symptoms of fever, cough, and dry throat, said Wednesday the government health monitoring agency (CDCD), which confirmed that she was positive for H5N1. She later died in hospital. The symptoms of avian influenza are similar to those of human flu.

The WHO called for vigilance in early February following observing cases of transmission to several mammals, including foxes, otters and sea lions. Examples of infected humans remain rarewith 868 confirmed cases of H5N1 over the past twenty years, for 457 deaths, according to the WHO.

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In Cambodia, no cases in humans had been recorded between 2015 and 2022, according to the UN agency, compared to 30 deaths between 2010 and 2014. “At present, the transmission of the virus is only from animals to humans, but the health authorities fear an evolution of the virus towards a form transmissible from human to human, opening the door to a pandemic”precise the Pasteur Institute.

Since the start of the epidemic, millions of domestic fowl had to be slaughtered around the world. Europe is facing a very virulent epizootic (diseases affecting only animal species). The mortality rate of the disease is particularly high in farmed birds (chicken, goose, turkey, duck, etc.) where the spread is rapid.