Health officials around the world look on anxiously as a Vietnamese nurse, who has ever taken care of a bird flu patient, has been confirmed to contract H5N1 virus. Epidemiologists are worried the viruses could mutate and become transmissible from human to human - resulting in a worldwide pandemic.
The 46-year-old female nurse from northern Thai Binh province was admitted last Thursday to the hospital with high fever, coughingand lung infection symptoms. She is the second Vietnamese health-care worker to be sickened by the bird flu virus since a 26-year-old male nurse from the same province contracted H5N1 on March 7, who had cared for the 21-year-old bird flu man patient.
The women also had cared for a 21-year-old man who tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus and currently remains in a critical condition.
As of press time Tuesday, 60 human cases of avian flu had been diagnosed in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, including 43 deaths, according to the associated reports. So few cases may not seem like cause for alarm, but health experts worldwide fear that if the avian flu virus and a human influenza virus were to simultaneously infect a person, it could form a new, mutated virus.
The new virus might acquire the ability to spread easily person to person in a sustained manner and result in a global pandemic of the H5N1, the strain of bird flu now occurring, experts said.
The viral infection typically strikes wild birds but can also affect chickens and other poultry. Humans are infected when exposed to sick birds, uncooked poultry or contaminated surfaces,
In the most recent outbreak of bird flu starting in late December 2004, Vietnam has detected 24 local people to contract H5N1, of whom 13 have died. The figure does not include seven cases, which were tested negative to H5N1 in January, but recentlyretested positive to the virus by a WHO-standard lab in Tokyo, Japan.
Bird flu, which has killed and led to the forced culling of more than 1.5 million fowls in 35 cities and provinces in Vietnam since January, is subsiding. By Wednesday, 20 out of the 35 localities have detected no new bird flu-affected spots for at least three weeks, said the country’s Department of Animal Health.
