Critical Thai Bird Flu Test Announcement Soon

Critical laboratory tests which might help determine whether a Thai mother caught bird flu from her dying daughter are due to be finished on Tuesday, a senior Thai Health Ministry official said.

“The lab results are due today and as soon as we know them we will hold a news conference,” Charal Trinvuthipong, head of the Department of Disease Control, told a Bangkok radio station.Charal, who said on Monday the test results were not due until next week, said even if they showed the mother died of bird flu it would not prove fears of human-to-human transmission.”If the lab test shows a positive result, it is possible that there could be human to human transmission. Or it could be that the mother might have contacted some source of the disease during her two-day stay in the village,” he said. The news conference to announce the result, to be attended by officials from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was scheduled for midnight EDT, a Health Ministry spokeswoman said.If the mother did have the H5N1 birdflu virus, then an investigation into how she acquired it would follow, Charal said.The mother went from her job near Bangkok to a village in the north-central province of Kamphaeng Phet to visit her sick 11-year-old daughter.The daughter died, the mother went back to her job and died soon after. The aunt, with whom the girl lived while her mother was away working, was confirmed to have the H5N1 virus on Monday, but was reported to be recovering.The girl and the aunt both had contact with infected chickens in the village — where Charal said chickens were still dying at the weekend when he visited it.The mother spent two nights in the village, but there is no proof she had contact with infected fowl, leaving open the possibility the girl passed on the disease to her.”GLOBAL CRISIS”The great fear among experts is that the virus could mutate — possibly through the medium of animals such as pigs that can harbor the human flu virus — into a form which could pass from person to person, setting off a pandemic.All 20 Vietnamese and 9 Thais killed by the virus have caught it from infected fowl. The World Health Organization said there was only a “very remote possibility” of human-to-human transmission in the Thai case, but international organizations are deeply worried about bird flu.It first swept across much of Asia early this year, probably carried by migrating water fowl, forcing the slaughter of tens of millions of fowl in an effort to prevent it spreading.But it recurred in Thailand, Vietnam and China in July and struck Malaysia for the first time, showing how difficult it is to stamp out the virus.”The avian influenza epidemic in Asia is a crisis of global importance,” the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the world animal health organization OIE said in a joint statement. (Source: Reuters, Sept 2004)