Reply #3: Another article on the cluster [View All]

[Mojorabbit]

Pakistan Has Eight Suspected Human Cases of Bird Flu (Update1)

By Jason Gale

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Five members of a family in Pakistan are among eight people who may be the country's first human cases of bird flu, the World Health Organization said. At least one brother died.

Pakistan's national laboratory found the lethal H5N1 avian flu strain caused the infections in three brothers and two cousins from the same family, according to information from a WHO statement today and Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman in Geneva. Another brother and his son from the U.S., who attended a funeral for one of the victims, tested negative for the virus at a hospital in Nassau County, New York, Hartl said.

Medical teams have been sent to Pakistan to assist local authorities in investigating the cases, in which two people had only mild symptoms, Hartl said. Avian flu has infected at least one person a month in Asia and Africa during the past three years and doctors are monitoring for signs it may be adapting to humans by killing fewer people, fostering its spread.

"It's too early to make any definitive conclusions'' about the outbreak, Hartl said in a telephone interview today. "We are still in the middle of it.''

The remaining suspected cases include a man and his niece, and a male who worked on a farm about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away.

Doctors from WHO in Geneva and Cairo, and from the U.S. Navy Medical Research Unit No. 3 in Cairo will arrive in Pakistan over the next two days to track and stem the disease's spread, and to analyze specimens for any genetic mutations in the virus.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aYP_YfthdMiA