Fergie's Tech Blog

H5N1 News: WHO Warns of More Bird Flu in China

An AP newswire article, via MSNBC, reports that:

China should prepare for more bird flu outbreaks in poultry and possibly more human cases as cold winter weather sets in, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The agency issued the warning despite praising China’s handling of outbreaks in its vast poultry flocks and the country’s first human cases reported Wednesday.

“We expect there will be more poultry outbreaks,” said Henk Bekedam, the chief WHO representative in Beijing. “In this cold weather, the virus can survive longer in the climate and therefore have a bigger chance to infect poultry.

The Ministry of Health in China has confirmed the country’s first two human cases of infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The first case is a 9-year-old boy from the southern province of Hunan. He was hospitalized with respiratory symptoms on 17 October and has since returned home, fully recovered.

The second case is a 24-year old woman who worked as a poultry farmer in the south-eastern province of Anhui. She developed symptoms on 1 November, was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on 7 November, and died on 10 November.

Testing was conducted by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing.

An additional two possible human cases have been investigated in Hunan Province. The first is the boy’s 12-year-old sister. She was hospitalized on 16 October and died the following day of severe bilateral pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. Samples from the girl are inadequate for testing, and the cause of her death will probably never be known with certainty. Although evidence pointing to H5N1 infection is considered substantial by Chinese experts, WHO reports only laboratory-confirmed cases.

posted by Fergie @ 11/17/2005 08:52:00 AM