H5N1: Spreading Within A Family?

While they know there is no widespread outbreak, this very well could be a human to human transmission. Exactly what we don’t want at this stage of the game.

A 16-year-old boy confirmed as Indonesia’s 12th human case of bird flu had two brothers who died from similar symptoms days before he was taken to hospital, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The brothers died on November 11 after being diagnosed with typhoid fever, but they were never tested for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, leaving questions hanging over the cause of death, WHO spokeswoman Maria Chang said.

“They had similar symptoms, fever and respiratory distress, but we don’t have samples. We’ll probably never have a definite diagnosis,” Chang said, adding that the possibility of human-to-human transmission of bird flu could not be ruled out.

[Source: My Way News]