An 11-year-old girl has died from the bird flu in Cambodia’s first known case in humans in nearly a decade.
The girl lived in a rural part of southeastern Cambodia and developed a high fever. Health officials said she died this week shortly after being admitted to the hospital in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Officials are testing dead wild birds near the girl’s home and at least a dozen other people for the virus strain, known as H5N1, according to Reuters.
Human cases have occurred since the strain was detected in the late 1990s, though they remain rare and typically result from contact with an infected bird.
H5N1 has circulated among bird populations for decades, but it sparked an outbreak at a Spanish mink farm last fall. It also spilled into otters and sea lions, raising fears about a wider problem on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the main fears is that the flu strain could mutate within intermediary mammal species in a way that lets it jump to humans, posing the risk of another pandemic.
The World Health Organization has said it is monitoring the strain.
“For the moment, the WHO assesses the risk to humans as low,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this month. “But we cannot assume that will remain the case, and we must prepare for any change in the status quo.”
