This could be serious. Testing time for H5N1 should be really quick. It's not like it's anything new.

It is reported, in a different story from fox news today, that this event has spanned the last 3 months. This caught my attention, 60 of 61 of the children admitted to the hospital have died. This is significant, they reported that the admissions were in "14 different provinces", and different hospitals.

This is not a localized event. Does anyone have, or seen any previous stories on this one ? or can anyone add more information on this event ?

If it is a mutated flu, or h5n1, by virtue of it only effecting children then it would appear that somehow along the road adults aquired immunity to it.  Whatever it is, it's very odd that it's only effecting children. 

 

Hope it's not some trial run to tweek their formula.

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A virus that causes hand, foot and mouth disease may have been responsible for some of the mysterious deaths of dozens of children in Cambodia since April, the Health Ministry said in a joint statement with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Fifty-nine cases had been identified involving children between the ages of three months and 11 years, with the majority younger than three years old. In all, 52 had died but samples were not available in the majority of cases.

"Based on the latest laboratory results, a significant proportion of the samples tested positive for Enterovirus 71 (EV-71), which causes hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD). The EV-71 has been known to generally cause severe complications among some patients," the statement published late on Sunday said.

It said a number of other pathogens were found including dengue and streptococcus suis, which is a pig pathogen that can be transmitted to humans.

"Further investigation is ongoing and this includes the matching of the laboratory and epidemiological information. We hope to be able to conclude our investigation in the coming days," Cambodian Health Minister Mam Bun Heng said in the statement.

The WHO said on July 3 it was helping Cambodia investigate the deaths of at least 60 children under seven years of age, most of whom had died within 24 hours of being admitted to hospital in Phnom Penh or the northern town of Siem Reap.

They had high fevers and signs of encephalitic or respiratory symptoms, or both, it said.

Hand, foot and mouth disease usually affects infants and children and is spread through direct contact with the mucus, saliva, or feces of an infected person. It typically occurs in small epidemics in nursery schools or kindergartens.





Weird that they think its from Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. My friend recently got that too and she's 23 years old, she worked for a non-profit org that worked with teenagers 13-17, which isn't the age group. However, since she came down with that, they laid her off.

Concerns over the spread of the hand, foot and mouth disease virus among young children in Thailand and Cambodia were fuelled on Thursday when Thailand suspended some primary and secondary school classes after closing more than 100 elementary schools, 22 of them in Bangkok

The closures come after nearly 14,000 cases of the virus were reported in Thailand, nearly all among children under five years old. No Thai deaths have been reported, but in Cambodia at least 55 children have died from the virus since April 1 – even though there are currently just 61 reported cases in the country.

The reason for the high death rate from such a small number of reported cases in Cambodia is because the virus is new to the country, explained World Health Organisation officials.

The disease has also killed 321 people in China in the second quarter of 2012, 50 per cent more than during the same period last year.

Officials from China’s centre for disease control have blamed the higher incidence on hot temperatures and have called on schools and parents to be more vigilant.

Symptoms can be as mild as general malaise or fever but can range to severe respiratory problems and even pulmonary failure; thus, only the most severe cases end up in Cambodian hospitals, said Brenton Burkholder, acting WHO representative in Bangkok. “This is most likely just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

HFMD principally affects children under five, mainly because it is transmitted by person to person contact, Dr Burkholder said. However, Thai officials have detected some cases in children as old as 12.

A senior western diplomat in Bangkok said embassies had received calls from worried expatriate parents, but were advising them that Thai authorities were taking swift and appropriate steps to bring the situation under control. “It is reassuring to see how quickly Thai health workers were sent out to schools and playgrounds to scrub everything down,” he said, citing television news images of government efforts to counter the virus.

Thailand has an “extensive surveillance system” for the HFMD virus, having dealt with outbreaks before, Dr Burkholder said. “They know how it progresses, and based on historical records, it tends to peak in the rainy season. This year, though, the outbreak appears to be higher than usual.”

Thai health officials have also dismissed fears of a possible mutation of the virus. Pornthep Siriwanarangsan, head of the Thai health ministry’s disease control department, said no new strains of HFMD had been detected and that most of the infections had been caused by common strains, particularly the Enterovirus 71, or EV-71.

Thailand’s Bureau of Emerging Infectious Diseases on Wednesday said HFMD is near its peak and, while it could spread further in the next four to six weeks, would subside after that.

Additional reporting by Simon Rabinovitch in Beijing.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/198de33e-d18c-11e1-bbbc-00144feabdc0.html#axzz216wXLfnb