Parents face anxious wait over Cambodia's mystery illness

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) -- Before dawn, line of parents trying to their sick children stretched the Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

Dozens of children waited their turn treatment. It is the normal daily here, especially during the rainy season when mosquito-borne illnesses are prevalent.

But the past four months doctors inside the busy hospital have been faced something that is not routine at ; a mysterious syndrome killing children so fast nearly all of the children infected it die within a day or two of admitted to the hospital.

Other hospitals in the country began reporting similar cases -- though fewer than the children's hospital in the capital, is the most popular. Since April, doctors the Kantha Bopha hospital have reported 66 of the illness. Of those cases only two children survived, 64 died.

Officials search more clues to mystery illness

Most of the children who have the illness have come from south of the country, health officials cannot find what is as a cluster -- that is a lot of cases coming one specific area.

"We have evidence there are particular places where this is more likely occur. So it is really a different pattern a normal infectious epidemic where you have cluster of cases. This not follow that pattern," the World Health Organization's representative in Cambodia, Pieter van Maaren, told CNN.

By June 29, The WHO been contacted and Cambodian Health officials were scrambling instruct health providers across the country to spread the message the masses as quickly as .

the Takeo Provincial Hospital in southwest Cambodia, every bed taken in the children's ward. Many of the children were diagnosed Dengue fever. A few had Encephalitis.

On Sunday, the head of pediatrics was in the hospital surrounded children hooked to intravenous drips. A five-year-old howled stomach pain, while another child was lethargic to lift his head. Most of children were feverish and dehydrated.

Dr. Te Vantha darted one sick child to another trying to sure they were getting the treatment needed. Nurses hurried in and with syringes and medicines. Meanwhile, mother's their children's heads, their faces blank from tiredness or wrinkled worry.

this time of year, about 50 children day are brought to the hospital treatment. Usually their ailments are treatable but in the past four months Dr. Vantha said he seen two cases that have left him baffled. In cases the children's condition deteriorated alarmingly .

one child the "lung X-ray on the right side showed consolidated opacity. The right lung had destroyed," he said.

"There was rapid evolution from hour to ."

That child died 24 hours of being admitted his hospital. The other died within 48 hours.

He said their symptoms included difficulty breathing, fever and coughing. He has telling any parent he can that if a child has similar symptoms to rush to hospital.

In Cambodia, with many places the world, parents first try treating their child home. If that doesn't work then they go their local clinic, with a trip to the nearest hospital the last as it often involves a long trip.

That is exactly what the family of five-year-old Pov Roath . They waited a week before bringing to the hospital after trying their local clinic . Nor Nim, his grandmother, sat beside him in the intensive unit as he gasped for and held his stomach. Nurses hurriedly put an oxygen tube his nose to try to make it easier for him to .

Dr. Vantha examined him as the boy vacillated yelping in pain and struggling to breathe.

Eventually little Roath was diagnosed Dengue fever. An estimated 10,000 Cambodians have contracted Dengue fever so this year, authorities say. Some 45 people have died it. It is a nasty illness but its mortality here is far lower than that of the current mystery illness.


Adapted and abridged from: CNN, July 9 2012.