18 May 2006
Indonesia Reports Largest Cluster of Human Bird Flu Cases
Authorities investigate if virus has become contagious among humans
Washington -- Five members of an extended family in a Sumatran village in Indonesia are dead, victims of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A sixth family member is ailing with the same condition, and health authorities are calling it the largest cluster of human cases reported to date.
Details of the disease in these family members who lived in neighboring houses have been emerging for days, but WHO issued a statement May 18 confirming the situation and its implications.
The source of exposure to the H5N1 virus, which has killed 122 people worldwide since 2003, is still under investigation in the Sumatran case.
This situation raises the possibility that the virus was passed through contact among the family members, a rare occurrence in the more than two years over which health officials have been tracking the disease. Most human cases have been linked to close contact with sick birds.
H5N1 is considered a dangerous threat to global public health because it could mutate and become contagious among humans, possibly creating a global influenza pandemic.
Health officials have been on the lookout for the emergence of a group of related cases that might mark this mutation in the virus.
The WHO statement does not indicate that the family in Sumatra marks the turning point in which the animal disease epidemic could become a major threat to human health. “Investigators at the outbreak site have found no evidence that infection has spread beyond members of this single extended family,” the WHO statement said, noting that other close contacts have not shown signs of illness in the more than two weeks since the first cases appeared in the village family.
“If human-to-human transmission has occurred, it has not been either efficient or sustained,” the statement said.
Indonesia has detected 40 human cases of H5N1, 23 of those since January. Thirty-one of the cases have been fatal in Indonesia, which is second only to Vietnam in total human occurrences of this disease.
A specialist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a member of the team in Kubu Sembelang village attempting to identify precisely the source of infection for this family, according to a spokesman at CDC’s Atlanta headquarters.
BIRD FLU IN NEAR EAST
Egyptian health authorities are reporting another human case of H5N1, its 14th, confirmed by WHO May 18. A 75-year-old woman died from the disease after a weeklong illness. She was exposed to the virus through contact with infected birds. Egypt has detected 14 cases with six fatalities this year, all attributed to direct contact with infected poultry.
Turkey posted a report with the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) May 18, indicating that it has been able to contain and end the outbreaks that began among domestic poultry in October 2005. (See related article.)
Through the course of its efforts to contain the animal outbreaks, the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture reported that it had culled 2.5 million birds from December 2005 to April 2006. In human infections, Turkey confirmed 12 human cases with a total of four deaths in January. No additional human cases have been reported.
The full text of the WHO report on the situation in Indonesia is available on the organization’s Web site.
For more information, see Bird Flu (Avian Influenza).
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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