The Laos Public Health Ministry confirmed that the country’s first suspected human case of avian influenza has been detected, following an outbreak of the virus at a poultry farm on the outskirts of Vientiane earlier this month, reporeted by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The health ministry identified the suspected case as a 15-year-old girl who had been working on a chicken farm in Srirattana district Vientiane, where an outbreak of H5N1 occurred in late January and was confirmed to be bird flu two weeks ago, said Radio Vientiane in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yong Chanhthalousy confirmed that authorities have received confirmation from the Mahidol Institute in Bangkok that the girl, who has been moved to Nong Khai Hospital in north-eastern Thailand, has tested positive for H5 but not yet for N1.
Hundreds of thousands of birds in Asia died due to a virus that has been dubbed the “bird flu.” The highly contagious illness is responsible for wiping out large numbers of poultry in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. The particular strain of influenza which has been reported as causing the deaths is called H5N1. Humans can contract the disease through close contact with infected birds, or with the feces of infected birds. It is not known to spread through human-to-human contact. There has been no indication that humans would get the disease through eating eggs or meat of sick birds. The only known way to eradicate the disease is by culling infected flocks.