Subscribe
The 17-year old Thai, who got sick last week, died from bird flu last Monday, making him the 15th Thai to die from the H5N1 virus since 2003. The boy might have caught the virus while helping his father bury dead chickens. He was initially thought to suffer from dengue haemorrhagic fever and not bird flu and so wasn’t given Tamiflu immediately. Officials now believe he had both.
His death has prompted Thai health officials to push for the use of antiviral drug Tamiflu in suspected cases rather than wait for lab results. When news of the boy’s death broke out, fear and concern were raised over a possible mutation of the two viruses in a victim’s body, but there has been no medcal evidence that such mutation has happened.
Dengue fever is a flu-like viral disease spread by the bite of an infected the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Symptoms include sudden onset of a high fever, severe headache, joint and muscle pains, and a rash that appears several days after onset of a fever. Dengue hemorrhagic fever is a severe and often fatal complication of dengue.
[Source: Reuters Alert News; Bangkok Post]
Tags: avian flu, Dengue fever, flu outbreak, flu vaccines, H5N1, mutations, Tamiflu, Thailand
1482 days ago
[...] The latest victim (number 16) was a 27-year old man from Uthai Thani who died early August. Before that, a 17-year old from Phichit had died of the avian flu. [...]
Reply