Sixteen Year Old Boy Dies From H5N1 Virus

He had been suffering from the H5N1 strain of bird flu...

Officials at the Ministry of Health in China have affirmed that a 16 year old boy has succumbed to the H5N1 birdflu virus. The boy who came from the Anhui Province in Eastern China is the fifteenth victim of the virus in China according to official figures. The sixteen year old boy had battled with the bird flu virus for ten days before he finally passed away from the symptoms of the disease.  The Chinese Centre for Disease Control & Prevention had taken samples from him which confirmed that he had been suffering from the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

In line with standard procedure anyone who has been in the vicinity of the boy is also being tested to see whether they may have contracted the virus. At present it is not known if the bird flu virus can be passed from human to the human but if the virus does mutate into a form which is contagious among humans the consequences could be extremely dangerous and thus medical authorities must be vigilant with regard to this. At present the local health authorities have no idea how the boy caught the bird flu virus and there have been no reported incidences of the bird flu in birds in the area. Last year in the same region there was another case of the H5N1 bird flu virus in a farmer who made a full recovery from the disease.

China which is the world’s largest nation and which has literally millions and millions of chickens and other poultry is a very secretive nation and some people think that while the official figures show that fifteen people have died in the nation from the H5N1 bird flu virus, it is likely that the real figure is much higher. Samples from this particular case of the bird flu virus have been delivered to the World Health Organisation for analysis and so that all information regarding the deadly virus can be shared among nations.