Published on December 13, 2005

27 people who had contact with lad in Nakhon Nayok test ‘negative’. Initial tests on people who had been in contact with the country’s latest human case of bird flu have cooled fears of a human-to-human outbreak, though it remains unclear how the infection was transmitted.

None of the blood samples drawn from people who had contact with the 5-year-old boy from Nakhon Nayok who died last week have tested positive.

The boy tested positive for H5N1 bird flu virus, said Dr Phaijitr Varachit, director-general of the Medical Sciences Department.

A total of 27 people who had physical contact with the boy are still under observation.

They include the boy’s parents, doctors and friends who had played with him before he fell ill, said Dr Sompong Boonsuepchat, health chief officer of Nakhon Nayok.

For the moment, all of them appear to be in good health, he said.

As such, Phaijitr said the department was unlikely to conduct another blood test to locate H5N1 antibodies.

The doctor conceded, however, that it usually takes two to three weeks to detect if one has contracted the virus.

Only the parents, especially the mother, were considered high-risk cases.

She had been closely nursing the boy, said Sompong who added she sometimes kissed the child’s cheeks.

So far, the mother appeared to be healthy, Sompong said.

In the wake of the latest human case, Nakhon Nayok’s public health office had ordered all private clinics to contact state hospitals quickly about suspected cases and refrain from attempting to treat them, the doctor said.

The boy victim was taken to two private clinics that mistook his symptoms for something else. They were partly to blame for the delay in bringing the boy to a proper hospital, where he might have been saved.

Another suspected child case from a nearby village was found to have the H3N2 strain of influenza and not bird flu, Sompong said.

Meanwhile, the Livestock Development Department said it would track the cause of the boy’s infection. It found no signs of the virus in the poultry near the victim’s house.

“It looks frightening. The chicken didn’t die but the boy did. This is an issue that needs investigation and clear answers,” Yukol Limlaemgthong, the department’s director-general, said.

Sompong said pigeons might be the source of the infection, dismissing the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

There were many pigeons around the boy’s house and the bird-flu virus might have been present in the birds’ faeces, he said.

Arthit Khwankhom,

Somkid Kanchanachidphan

The Nation

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