| HONG KONG (AFP) - A two-year-old boy has died in Hong Kong after contracting anthrax, the government said Tuesday. Although there was no indication yet of the source of the infection, there was no evidence the boy was the victim of a bioterror attack, a spokeswoman said. "There is no evidence that this was a biological attack," Department of Health consultant Dr Tse Lai-yin told reporters. Tse said health officials are investigating the source of the boy's illness, and that his family neither kept pets, nor did he recently come into contact with any animals - a common form of transmission. His symptoms and a post-mortem showed he most likely got sick from eating "contaminated food or some other object." "We suspect he consumed uncooked contaminated meat as the source" since the boy's diet consisted mainly of pork and fish, Tse said. The boy began displaying symptoms of anthrax - abdominal pains, vomitting and diarrhoea - on May 27 and died May 30 in hospital after slipping into a coma, she said. "It was most definitely not inhaled," she said, adding that doctors only diagnosed the cause of the boy's death as anthrax on Tuesday. Members of the boy's family, who have been put under medical observation, have not shown any similar symptoms, Tse said. She also said the illness doesn't appear to have spread to anyone else the boy might have come into contact with, including other pupils and teachers at his nursery. "This is a sporadic case so far but we have to investigate further," Tse said. Inhalable anthrax ground into powder form was delivered in letters to media outlets in the United States in late 2001 sparking fears of a bioterror attack following the September 11 terror attacks. "We are concerned by this case because anthrax is a very rare disease in Hong Kong," Tse said. According to the Department of Health, there has only been three other cases of anthrax reported in the territory in the past 20 years. Two cases occurred in 1982, and the last fatality was a 13-year-old boy who succumbed to the disease in 1994, she said. The anthrax case has emerged just as Hong Kong is getting over an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which has killed 290 people in the territory in the past three months and inflicted huge economic damage. But Tse said area hospitals had been alerted to the anthrax death, and that there was no need for a wider emergency response system to be implemented. "We just need the public to maintain good personal hygiene and make sure their food is cooked very very well," she said, adding that there was no need for the public to fear a larger outbreak of anthrax.
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