Grandfather of bird flu patients also infected
The grandfather of two siblings infected with bird flu in Vietnam has also has contracted the virus but has shown no symptoms of the disease that has killed 46 people in the region.
Health authorities suspect that the three family members, from northern Thai Binh province, caught the virus after eating an infected goose slaughtered by the grandfather a month ago, and there was no immediate indication that they had infected one another.
Test results at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemology in Hanoi showed that the 80-year-old man was infected with the severe H5N1 strain of bird flu.
The man remains in good health at his home, without any of the disease’s typical symptoms of high fever and breathing difficulties.
His 21-year-old grandson and 14-year-old granddaughter are hospitalised in Hanoi. None of the remaining 12 family members have tested positive for the virus.
Earlier this week, Vietnam reported that a 26-year-old male nurse who cared for the grandson had also been infected by bird flu but health officials said it was likely he contracted the disease outside the hospital.
Health authorities suspect a meal of goose the family had on February 8 was the source of the infections. However, they ate chickens and geese several times during the week-long Lunar New Year festival last month.
Several cases in Vietnam and Thailand have involved family clusters, with several relatives were infected at the same time, though there has been no evidence that the virus has mutated into a form easily transmitted by people. Health officials warn that when that happens, the virus could spark a global pandemic that kills millions.
So far, most human infections have been traced to contact with sick poultry.
Vietnam has had a total of 33 deaths from the deadly disease, 13 of them in the latest outbreak which began last December. A woman in Cambodia also died this year in a Vietnamese hospital.
Twelve people have died in Thailand.
The latest severe form of bird flu first appeared in the region in December 2003, killing millions of poultry before jumping to humans.
The grandfather has been given anti-viral drugs and asked to limit contact with other people, said Dao Trong Bich, deputy director of the medical centre in Thai Thuy District where the family lives.
The man’s family had raised chickens. The man then gave three chickens to his daughter, the mother of the 21-year-old man and his 14-year-old sister.
