More Bird Flu Cases in Thai Binh Vietnam?
Recombinomics Commentary
February 27, 2005
>> The Thai experts met doctors of the Tropical Disease Hospital, who successfully treated a Type A flu patient infected with the H5N1 virus, Nguyen Thanh Hung, who was discharged from the hospital on Friday.
Representatives from the Health Ministry of Vietnam and the Thai Government agreed to hold a conference on the control of H5N1 virus infection.
The same day, the Thai delegation visited two Type A flu patients from Thai Binh. <<
The recent confirmation of H5N1 infections in 4 patients from Thai Binh in the past few days has raised questions of the origin of infections in the patients, who clustered in space and time. In addition to the 4 recent cases (14F, 21M, 36M, 69M), there was a cluster last month, which included Nguyen Thanh Hung, as well as a cluster last year in Thai Binh.
The January 30, 2005 media report quoted above suggested that there were additional H5N1 patients from Thai Binh. However, there are no additional reports indicating that these patients were H5N1 confirmed and there are no reports on their outcome.
Since there have been problems with false negatives in the H5N1 sub-typing test in Vietnam, it would be useful to know how many fatal influenza A patients have been from Thai Binh this year.
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