India inquires into first death due to bird flu | International | News

India is investigating the first case of bird flu since an 11-year-old boy died in July, the health ministry said on Thursday.

The boy, who lives in Gurgaon near New Delhi, was suffering from leukemia and pneumonia. He was hospitalized in the capital on July 2 and died ten days later of multiple organ failure.

Genetic sequencing and isolation of the virus is underway and an epidemiological investigation has been launched, the health ministry said Wednesday night.

Bird flu is caused by the flu virus that spreads between birds and sometimes humans. Cases transmitted from person to person are very rare.

Two strains of bird flu, H5N1 (between 2003 and 2011, after the first episode in 1997), and H7N9 (since 2013) led to human pollution in Asia by infected birds.

The H7N9 virus has infected 1,668 people and caused 616 deaths since 2013, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

In the case of India, the ministry clarified that the virus belonged to the H5N subtype which is considered to be of concern.

The doctors and nurses who treated the patient have been under surveillance since July 16 and no symptoms have been reported, the ministry said.

Contacts and family members followed, but no one developed any symptoms.

China reported the first global case of H1N3 bird flu in humans in early June, at which time it did not cause concern to world health officials.

Furthermore, the H5N1 virus, which is derived from H5N1, was found to be circulating on several European farms in February by several employees of a poultry factory in Russia.

In January, India ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of chickens, which must have two strains of bird flu, H5N1 and H5N8.

In recent decades, the country has been plagued by several bird flu cases, the most severe of which, in 2008, killed millions of chickens.

India, the world’s second most populous country of 1.3 million people, is currently infected with the corona virus, which has polluted more than 31 million people and killed more than 400,000. (I)