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| Joned Ginting, the only survivor in his family in Sumatra |
According to Maria Cheng, a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Indonesia, seven members of a family in North Sumatra died in May from avian influenza, likely due to mutual infection.
According to eyewitness Joned Ginting, the sole survivor of this family, his relatives passed away one by one over a period of three weeks. On April 29, his sister had been coughing throughout the night in a cramped room shared with her two sons and a 32-year-old brother.
All four of them have now died. Four others in the family living next door also contracted the illness and died, except for Ginting.
On May 25, 2006, in Hanoi, Ivo Zdarek, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to Vietnam, handed over 40 tons of disinfectant chemicals worth $200,000 to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam as aid to combat avian influenza in Vietnam. T.Truc – TTXVN |
The WHO believes that this family case may be an isolated incident, and the cause of infection might be due to prolonged and close contact with infected individuals. However, health experts have requested that 33 people who had contact with the seven victims undergo self-isolation at home to prevent further transmission. These individuals will be monitored for health checks over the next one to two weeks.
Dick Thompson, a spokesperson for the WHO, stated that virus samples from the group of seven victims have been sent to a laboratory in Hong Kong for testing, and there are no signs that they have mutated into a more transmissible form.
Regarding the question of the source of infection for this family in North Sumatra, Indonesian health experts and the WHO still do not have an answer.
TH.Tùng
