Avian flu: An 11-year-old girl died of the disease

Health officials in Cambodia have announced the death of an 11-year-old girl from bird flu, the first death since 2014 from the animal disease that rarely spreads to humans.

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The girl from Prey Veng (southeast) province fell ill on February 16 with symptoms of fever, cough and dry throat, the Government Health Monitoring Agency (CDCT) said on Wednesday. He later died at a children’s hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh, according to an official source, whose date was not specified.

In 20 years, 868 people were infected

She was “positive for H5N1,” the strain of avian flu that is highly contagious in birds, CDCD found. The World Health Organization (WHO) called for vigilance in early February against the risk of bird flu spreading to mammals after it was detected in foxes, otters or sea lions.

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But examples of infected humans are rare, with 868 confirmed cases of H5N1 over the past two decades, with 457 deaths, according to the WHO. In Cambodia, no human cases were reported between 2015 and 2022, compared with 30 deaths between 2010 and 2014, according to the UN.

Bird flu is spread through contact with birds. Since late 2021, Europe has been struggling with its worst bird flu epizootic, which has also spread to the Americas. This led to the culling of tens of thousands of domestic chickens around the world, many of which carried the H5N1 strain.