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China confirms human bird flu case from 2003

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 August 2006, 11:27 CDT

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - China confirmed on Tuesday that the country's first human case of the H5N1 bird flu virus was in late 2003, two years earlier than originally reported, prompting the U.N.'s health agency to call for greater transparency.

The case had spurred questions about whether there might have been other human H5N1 infections in China prior to what had been its first reported human case, near the end of 2005.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the 24-year-old soldier based in Beijing was "the first confirmed case in the (world's) present outbreak," having preceded a case in Vietnam.

Eight Chinese researchers published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June saying a soldier, who was admitted to hospital in November 2003 for respiratory distress and pneumonia and later died, had been infected with H5N1.

His virus samples genetically resembled H5N1 viruses taken from Chinese chickens in various provinces in 2004, the eight experts said.

China's Health Ministry confirmed the case on Tuesday by "parallel laboratory tests" carried out in cooperation with the WHO, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"The source of his H5N1 infection remains uncertain, particularly as no poultry outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza have been reported in Beijing," the WHO said in a statement. It added the soldier had died on December 3, 2003.

Dick Thompson, WHO spokesman in Geneva, said there was "no suggestion" that the man had traveled outside the capital.

Chinese officials have told the WHO, a United Nations agency, that they are not doing any further "retrospective testing" on stored samples from suspect cases, he added.

HOW MANY MORE CASES?

The WHO's spokesman in Beijing, Roy Wadia, said the Health Ministry had been unaware of the case until the researchers' letter was published.

"It speaks about the need for really close collaboration and transparent communication between various players within the government structure," he said.

"As we've said all along, it has been conceivable that there have been sporadic cases out here and in other countries that have not been picked up. It's good that this case came to light, but the question is how many cases might there be out there?"

Wadia said the Health Ministry had told them military scientists first tested the man and found he was infected with H5N1 but did not tell the health department until much later.

China's Health Ministry said there was no cause for alarm.

"People need not panic," spokesman Mao Qun'an was quoted by Xinhua as saying. "The surveillance capability of bird flu in the country is significantly strengthened nowadays in comparison with two years ago."

China now has 20 confirmed cases, 13 of them fatal, including the 2003 case confirmed on Tuesday, the WHO said. The virus has killed 137 people worldwide since 2003.

The scientists' findings were one of the clearest indications yet that the virus might have been brewing for much longer in the vast country than what had been reported.

Experts in Hong Kong have long insisted that the virus has always been present in mainland China, but Chinese authorities have denied that.

(Additional reporting by Tan Ee Lyn in Hong Kong and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)

Source: REUTERS

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