H5N1 Spread in Northern Pakistan?
Recombinomics Commentary 07:23
February 18, 2008
Meanwhile, sources in the provincial health department told this correspondent that a team of the World Health Organisation, which was already monitoring the situation in Hazara region, had reached Mansehra to review the situation.
The above comments on the confirmed H5N1 at a poultry farm in Manshera in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) raises questions about recent spread of H5N1 in the region. The most recent OIE report filed by Pakistan describes two outbreaks near Karachi in the south earlier this month. The last report on H5N1 in the north was for an outbreak that began last November. At that time there were multiple poultry outbreaks in the area as well as human cases which tested positive in Pakistan. Sample degradation limited WHO confirmation to one fatal case.
However, media reports on the outbreaks near Karachi, raised questions about outbreaks in the north, including a suspect human case. Recent reports described H5N1 confirmed poultry, but associated locations include Abbottasbad, Manshera, and now Hazara. All of these locations are near each other in the NWFP (see satellite map here here here) and may be multiple descriptions of current and former outbreaks, but the presence of a WHO monitoring team in the area suggests the H5N1 infections extend beyond the one recently confirmed farm.
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