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Confusing Media Reports Out Of Vietnam

 

 

# 4401

 


A hat tip goes to CIDRAP news for picking up this story from The Saigon Times, indicating that the 17 year-old from Tuyen Quang Province diagnosed with H5N1 has died.  

 

Thus far, we’ve seen no confirmation on the WHO (World Health Organization) site, although those reports sometimes take several days before they appear. 

 

As often happens with these news reports, there are a couple of discrepancies which serve to confuse the picture.

 

First, here’s the article.  I’ll return with a few comments.

 

More bird flu cases confirmed

 

By Thoa Nguyen - The Saigon Times Daily

Tuesday,  March 2,2010,23:55 (GMT+7)

 

HANOI - The Ministry of Health on Monday confirmed that a 17-year-old girl living in the northern upland province of Tuyen Quang died last Friday after she had been diagnosed with bird flu. She is the third person to have contracted the virus, another whom died last week.

 

The girl, who lived in Tan Trao Commune in Don Duong District, began feeling ill on February 19. She was admitted to Son Duong Hospital where her fever and cough were treated with Tamiflu.

 

The Central Epidemiology Institute confirmed she tested positive for the H5N1 virus. A study conducted by the institute found that the patient had raised chickens at her home and several of the fowls had died of unknown causes recently.

 

The National Preventive Medicine and Environment Department reported that since the beginning of the year, Vietnam has had three fatal bird flu cases.

 

 

The day before this report, on March 1st, media reports portrayed this patient as being in pretty good condition (“only mild shortness of breath, not breathing machine, the image X - ray chest and good progress is being managed”).

 

Of course, earlier this year Egypt has a patient listed as being in `stable’ for several weeks after they had apparently died. 

 

So you never can be too sure.

 

To add to the confusion, the above article suggests this is the second death of 2010 in the first paragraph, and 4th paragraph down states this is the 3rd Bird Flu fatality of the year.

 

The same day, the Voice of Vietnam had this headline:

 

 Tuyen Quang confirms one A/H5N1 fatality

 

But the accompanying article made no mention of a fatal outcome.

 

As a flu blogger and (part time) newshound, this is the sort of thing I run into fairly often; news reports from reasonably reputable media sources that are incomplete, contradictory, or just plain confusing.

 

It becomes even more difficult when dealing with machine (or even human) translations.  Luckily these are English language reports today.

 

If nothing else, today’s blog serves as a cautionary tale when it comes to blindly accepting facts reported in the media (any media -foreign or domestic) as being 100% accurate.  

 

Caveat Lector always applies.

 

The best I can do under these circumstances is relay the story, express my reservations, and await further details. 

 

 

Have there been one, two, or three H5N1 deaths in Vietnam this year?

 


I’m guessing `two’ right now, but I’ll let you know when I find out.

Related Post:

Bird Flu
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