The hospital in Vietnam where a Takeo woman died Feb 5 of a suspicious respiratory disease now says that it has located blood samples from the deceased that can be tested for avian influenza, an official from the World Health Organization said Wednesday.
However, the hospital’s delay in sending the samples to the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City could mean they have deteriorated beyond reliability, WHO epidemiologist Sean Tobin said.
Also on Wednesday, the government announced a $50,000 donation from the Chinese government to the ministries of health and agriculture for fighting the spread of bird flu in Cambodia, a Foreign Ministry official said.
The Ministry of Health was waiting for the Pasteur Institute to confirm whether the 24-year-old pregnant woman was Cambodia’s first human death from bird flu, Dr Ly Sovann, head of the surveillance bureau for the ministry’s Communicable Disease Department, said Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Chau Doc Hospital told the WHO in Ho Chi Minh City that it could not find samples from the patient, whose body was cremated shortly after her death.
Takeo provincial health officials reported to Ly Sovann on Feb 5 that the patient’s family said they saw hospital doctors take blood samples from the woman, he said.
“Our staff there is sure they got the samples,” he said.
If the samples were not stored at the proper temperature during the nearly weeklong delay, any remnants of the virus could have disintegrated, Tobin said. In that case, a negative test result would be unreliable, although a false positive would be unlikely, he said.
“Rather than send the samples directly to Ho Chi Minh City, the hospital held on to them,” he said. “Why they did that, I have no idea.”
Ly Sovann and Tobin both said that there are no new reports of suspected human bird flu cases. The WHO and the Ministry of Health released a joint advisory Wednesday said that there is no evidence that humans can contract bird flu from contaminated food, but that sick poultry and their eggs should not be eaten.
