Health officials have confirmed that an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died from the first known case of bird flu in a person in the country in nine years.
The girl from a small town in the province of Prey Veng was found to have the H5N1 virus on Wednesday. A week before, she got sick with a high fever, a cough, and a sore throat.
The Cambodian Ministry of Health said that her father had also tested positive and that 11 other people had also been tested. Health Minister Mam Bunheng said that it was the first H5N1 infection in a person in Cambodia since 2014.
The girl was taken from her village to the children’s hospital in Phnom Penh, which is the capital, but she died soon after being diagnosed.
Officials have taken samples from a few dead birds that were found near the girl’s home. Officials in charge of health have also told people not to touch dead or sick birds.
In 2014, there was the last case of bird flu in Cambodia. In the 10 years before, 56 people were infected with H5N1, and 37 of them died.
Rarely do people get the bird flu because their throats, noses, and upper respiratory tracts don’t have the receptors that the current virus strain needs to attack. People who work with infected birds are more likely to get sick.
Since 2021, the WHO has found eight cases of people getting H5N1 in China, India, Spain, the UK, and the US. Birds all over the world are getting sick from a new strain of the virus that is very easy to spread.
Since October 2021, when the recent bird flu outbreak began, it has been going around the world. The World Organisation for Animal Health told the BBC that it had recorded almost 42 million individual cases in both domestic and wild birds.
Nearly 15 million domestic birds, including poultry, have died from the disease, and more than 193 million more have been killed.
Mammals like minks and otters had also been infected by the strain. The World Health Organization said earlier this month that the virus will “need to be monitored closely” to see if it is changing into a form that can spread between people.
