# 7787
While the traditional hotspots (Indonesia, Egypt, China) for human H5N1 infection remain strangely quiet, Cambodia continues to report new cases, mostly among children, and mostly in the southern provinces. Today Xinhua New is reporting on their 19th and 20th cases of 2013,..
An official statement has not yet shown up on the the Cambodian MOH or World Health Organization WPRO websites. I’ll update this post with a link when that happens. Yesterday ProMed Mail carried an RFI (request for information) regarding a rumor of one of these cases.
Of the 41 cases reported in Cambodia since 2005, nearly half (20) have been reported this year.
Two new bird flu cases confirmed in Cambodia, one dies
English.news.cn 2013-09-19 13:41:08
PHNOM PENH, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Two more new human cases of avian influenza have been confirmed for the H5N1 virus in Cambodia, bringing the number of the cases to 20 so far this year, a hospital spokesman said Thursday.
A five-year-old girl from Takeo province and a two-year-old girl from Kampot province, who already died on Wednesday, marked the 19th and 20th confirmed cases of avian influenza this year, said Dr. Denis Laurent, deputy director of Kantha Bopha Children' s Hospital, the kingdom's largest pediatric hospital. "The little girl from Kampot was in very serious condition when she arrived at our hospital and died Wednesday," he told Xinhua." The little girl from Takeo still hospitalizes, but her condition is stable."
Only nine out of the 20 cases this year survived.
H5N1 influenza is a flu that normally spreads between sick poultry, but it can sometimes spread from poultry to humans, according to the World Health Organization. It is a very serious disease that requires hospitalization.
Cambodia saw the worst outbreak of the virus this year since it was first identified in 2004. To date, the country has recorded 41 human cases of the virus, killing 30 people.
While Cambodia has reported the bulk of the cases in 2013 there remain serious gaps in surveillance, testing, and reporting around the world, and so the true incidence of human infection with this virus isn’t really known. We assume we are missing some cases.
For now, H5N1 remains poorly adapted to humans, only causing sporadic infections in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and is primarily a threat to poultry.
That status could change, of course.
And so we watch H5N1, along with the upstart H7N9 avian flu, MERS-CoV, and a growing list of other emerging infectious diseases carefully, for signs they may be better adapting to humans.
