Health officials on Tuesday said they fear that the bird flu sweeping the region might jump the species barrier and infect humans.
“We are very worried,” Minister of Health Hong Sun Huot said. “And so are the people, they are very worried.”
Though there are no reports of people in Cambodia being infected by avian influenza, which is deadly to poultry and can spread to humans, the disease has killed six people in Vietnam and two in Thailand, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
China’s official news agency Xinhua also reported on Tuesday that the first cases of bird flu have been found among ducks in the south of the country near the Vietnamese border.
A father and his 16-year-old son were tested for the flu in Phnom Penh but they were cleared Tuesday afternoon, said Dr Jean-Baptiste Dufourcq of Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital.
World Health Organization epidemiologist Sean Tobin said four more people who were tested Sunday in Phnom Penh have also been found free of infection.
The flu is characterized by a fever higher than 38 degrees Celsius, Tobin said.
Bird flu cannot be passed from human to human, but officials fear it could mutate as it is “very similar” to pig and human flus, said Jean-Claude LeVasseur, UN Food and Agriculture Organization country representative.
He said if bird flu passes to humans, the disease could be worse than severe acute respiratory syndrome, which killed nearly 800 people worldwide last year.
“The strain of the disease, H5N1, is highly contagious and would have more serious consequences as far as mortality,” LeVasseur said.
Chhun Huot, whose chickens tested positive for bird flu Friday, said that he has already lost between $3,000 and $4,000 because of the disease, which has caused the death or extermination of all 3,000 chickens on his farm in Phuong Peay village, Russei Keo district.
“I will face a financial crisis in my family if my losses from the bird flu cannot be recovered,” he said.
Officials still have no estimates on the cost of the disease and investigations for bird flu are ongoing countrywide, San Vanty, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Agriculture, said Tuesday.
“We observed that there are some chickens sick, but it is related to Newcastle disease and not bird flu,” he said.
Unlike bird flu, Newcastle disease does not appear to spread to humans, San Vanty said.
Also on Tuesday, En Sam Ol, Takeo chief of customs, reported that the owners of seven vehicles seized in Takeo last week for illegally transporting duck eggs from Vietnam to Cambodia, were fined $77 each.
The eggs were crushed and buried last week.
