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Health officials in Papua New Guinea are investigating the mysterious deaths last week of an unknown number of people in remote villages in Morobe Province.
A medical team from the World Health Organisation and PNG’s health department has flown into the areas to assess the situation and collect samples in an effort to find out what is causing the deaths, which have been put as high as 40 by some media.
[...] Mr Posani says some of the victims have had respiratory problems, others diarrhoea and dehydration, but he says doctors won’t know if there is any link to the swine flu virus until laboratory results are known."

TWIN outbreaks of a mystery flu and dysentery in a remote region of Papua New Guinea have killed 47 people and infected another 2,000 villagers, a senior medical official said on Monday.
A separate eruption of cholera in the Pacific island nation has killed seven adults and sickened 73 other people, provincial health adviser Theo Likei told AFP.
Twenty-seven villagers in the Menyamya district of Morobe province, on the northeast coast, have died from an as-yet unidentified influenza since August 3, while a further 20 were felled by dysentery.
'Roughly 2,000 people are sick in about 12 villages and we suspect influenza and dysentery are the cause,' Mr Likei told AFP.
'So far there have been about 47 deaths, about 90 per cent of them in the village of Akwanda,' where 95 per cent of the reported flu and dysentery infections were reported.
It was not immediately known whether the flu-like illness was H1N1 flu or another strain...

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Cholera, flu outbreaks in Papua New Guinea
Flu-like illnesses
In Morobe's Menyamya district, 27 people have also died of an influenza-like illness since Aug. 3, and another 20 have been victims of dysentery, provincial health adviser Dr. Theo Likei told Agence France-Presse.
"Roughly 2,000 people are sick in about 12 villages, and we suspect influenza and dysentery are the cause," Likei said. "So far, there have been about 47 deaths, about 90 per cent of them in the village of Akwanda."
WHO has taken samples to test whether the illness is swine flu or another strain, Likei said.
Likei told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the worst affected cases in Menyama district were children and pregnant women.

The Papua New Guinea Health Minister, Sasa Zibe, says the common flu is to blame for many of the deaths in Morobe Province over the past several weeks. The province has been hit by a series of illnesses, with several thousand people affected with influenza and dysentery in rural villages in the Menyamya district. Official figures say the death toll there is at least eighty but local reports have put the figure at more than double that. There have also been seven deaths from cholera in several coastal villages in the province.

Mr Zibe says tests done in Brisbane have ruled out the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, in Menyamya.

“We have now, I just got the test result back from Brisbane today and I can officially tell you that we have tested negative, it’s not swine flu. I was just briefed today by my officers it was not swine flu.”

Flu virus spreads

By BOLA NOHO

THE H1N1 virus that causes influenza has emerged aga this year, alarming the health authorities to work hard to contain it.
Seventeen new cases were detected in Goroka in the Eastern Highlands and Vanimo in West Sepik provinces on top of 12 cases detected last year.
Health Secretary Dr Clement Malau said during a press conference last Thursday that the department had received this information from the Melbourne World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre.
Dr Malau said the influenza positive samples sent from Goroka and Vanimo surveillance units indicated that all 17 of the positive samples for January to May this year were pandemic.
“The recent identification of pandemic influenza A or H1N1 is significant as it is the first evidence of in-country transmission of the virus in PNG,” he said.
Dr Malau said during the early part of the pandemic 12 cases were identified last year among international travellers in the country.
He said it would be important for the people who were at high risk of severe illness like pregnant women, toddlers above six months of age and those with other significant health problems to be vaccinated on priority basis.
Dr Malau said all people attending the outpatient departments should be vaccinated immediately, adding that general public who wished to get vaccinated should also be vaccinated at all health facilities and hospitals.
“The key messages for provincial and district authorities are that vaccination of at-risk groups including health workers, pregnant women and people with underline medical conditions must be completed as early as possible,” said Dr Malau.
He also said the treatment of influenza-like illness with Tamiflu medicine should be undertaken at all major hospitals.