- Monday, February 24, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S health ministry has said that it is investigating the first documented human death caused by bird flu after an 11-year-old boy died of the disease earlier this month.
The boy, who succumbed at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, on July 12 after undergoing treatment for 10 days, lived in Gurgaon near the Indian capital of New Delhi and was also suffering from leukaemia and pneumonia.
On Wednesday (21), the ministry said genome sequencing and virus isolation is in process and an epidemiological probe has also been started, AFP reported.
Avian influenza mainly occurs in birds and poultry while cases of transmission between humans are considered extremely rare.
Two strains of bird flu — H5N1 and H7N9 — led to human contamination in Asia through infected birds. While H5N1 first broke out in 1997 and then spread between 2003 and 2011, H7N9 was first seen in 2013.
More than 1,600 people have been infected by H7N9 since 2013 and 616 have been killed, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The Indian ministry said that in that country, the virus belonged to H5Nx subtype, which has raised alarm by evolving into highly dangerous strains.
The doctors and nurses who treated the boy have been kept under monitoring since July 16 but none has reported any symptoms, the ministry added. Also family members, close contacts and health care workers did not exhibit any symptoms.
In June, China revealed its maiden human case of bird flu while in February, Russia detected the same disease among workers at a poultry factory.
In the recent decades, India has seen several bouts of bird flu outbreaks, including in 2008, when millions of poultry were culled.
The death from bird flu has added to the concerns of the authorities in a country which is already battling the coronavirus crisis that has claimed more than 400,000 lives so far.
