THAILAND: Don’t Panic, WHO Says of Human Transmission of Bird Flu

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 28 2004 (IPS) - In an effort to thwart a global panic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) is cautioning against fears that could arise from the first probable case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu in Thailand.

The U.N. health agency’s tone – in the wake of an announcement Tuesday to explain the death of a 26-year-old Thai woman – was in marked contrast to the alarm it raised in January, when the first outbreak of bird flu this year was raging across Asia.

Then the Geneva-based health agency warned of a pandemic that could be worst than HIV/AIDS, killing millions, if the H5N1 strain of avian flu mutates and is passed from one person to another. No human being, the WHO pointed out, had immunity against this potential new virus.

‘’Based on evaluations so far, there is no significant public health threat,” Dr. Kumara Rai, the WHO’s representative in Thailand, told IPS. ‘’There is no evidence of mutation or re-assortment of the virus.”

He added: ‘’There is no reason to panic.”

To be doubly sure, the WHO will be sending specimens of the bird flu virus that probably led to the Thai woman Pranee Thonchan’s death to its collaborating centre in the United States.

The WHO’s call for calm came shortly after the Thai government announced here that it had detected the first probable case of a person infecting another with bird flu.

According to Thai authorities, Pranee had been infected by the avian flu virus while looking after her 11-year-old daughter, who was in hospital with the disease. The daughter, Sakuntala, died on Sep. 8 in the north-central province of Khampaeng Phet.

Pranee, who died of the disease on Sep. 20, had been away in another part of the country when Sakuntala fell ill and had returned to care for her soon after.

Pranee could have contracted the virus ‘’from the sick daughter who she was taking care of very closely at the hospital,” the Thai government explained in a statement.

The deaths brought to 10 the number of Thais who have died due to the H5N1 virus during its two outbreaks this year. Of these, nine people died after having come into direct contact with infected poultry.

Vietnam, the other Asian country as badly hit by the virus, has had 20 deaths due to the disease.

Yet WHO’s Rai and Thai health authorities are drawing attention to other details surrounding the death of the mother and daughter to portray the first case of human-to-human transmission as more of a one-off event.

No health workers in the hospital where the mother contracted the disease have been infected, they say, suggesting the possibility that the virus was weak.

‘’This shows that the efficiency of the transmission of the probable virus was low,” says Rai. ‘’If it was efficient, it would have been worse.”

But that is no reason for complacency to control the spread of the lethal virus, declared the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Tuesday’s announcement reinforced the need to control and eradicate the virus, He Changchui, FAO’s regional representative for Asia and the Pacific, said at a press conference.

The FAO wants to see ‘’further evidence and information to help us understand if and what may have changed in the biology and genetic make-up of the incriminated virus to give rise to this probable human-to-human transmission,” said He.

On Monday, the Rome-based U.N. food agency described the bird flu epidemic in Asia as a ‘’crisis of global importance” and warned that the virus will ‘’not probably be eradicated in the near future.”

Since July, six Asian countries have reported outbreaks, including China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand.

The scale of the spread is less than what it was during the first major outbreak early this year, when eight Asian countries were hit, including two-thirds of Thailand 76 provinces.

In an effort to contain avian flu at that time, over 100 million chickens were slaughtered or died due to the disease. Thailand, the world’s fourth-largest chicken exporter, culled over 40 million birds during that episode.

Bird flu, which is transmitted through the air and is released in nasal secretion and the faeces of infected birds, caused alarm in 1997 after an outbreak of the H5N1 strain of the virus killed six people in Hong Kong.

In August this year, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that the H5N1 virus had been found in pigs, indicating the virus was no longer limited to the poultry family as had been the case hitherto.

The account alarmed public health experts, since this reported first case meant that the avian flu virus had mutated into a form that could lead to human-to-human infections.