Two people died after three cases of bird flu were reported in Cambodia on Friday. The cases were reported during the first three weeks of the New Year which is as many as the country reported throughout 2012.
Since its break out in 2003, the virulent virus H5N, known to be the cause of bird flu, has killed 360 people worldwide. Throughout 2012, Cambodia reported three cases of bird flu. This year, in the first three weeks, the Southeast Asian country has reported three cases of bird flu, two of which proved to be fatal.
WHO health ministry announced that a 38-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl died in the hospital after been diagnosed with bird flu. However, an 8-month-old boy survived after undergoing proper treatment.
Since 2005, Cambodia has recorded 21 cases, 19 of them fatal. All three cases reported last year resulted in death. While scientists have clarified that the disease is not easily transmitted, they fear that with time it would mutate into a more deadly form that spreads easily from person to person. So far, all cases that have been reported are speculated to be because of the person's close interaction with infected poultry.
The announcement came two days after scientists around the world except the U.S. announced that they will be resuming their study on the virus as their countries adopt new rules to ensure safety.
A letter that announced that resuming of similar studies was published in journals Science and Nature last week. Scientists said that the studies that match their country's safety requirements will resume their study before the bird flu mutates and becomes a bigger threat.
"We fully acknowledge that this research - as with any work on infectious agents - is not without risks," wrote the researchers, who included Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Ron Fouchier of Erasmus University in the Netherlands. "However, because the risk exists in nature that an H5N1 virus capable of transmission in mammals may emerge, the benefits of this work outweigh the risks."
