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China Told Bird Flu Warning, Treatment Systems Must Be Improved

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

Text of report by Chinese news agency Zhongguo Xinwen She

Beijing, 22 September: Academician Zhong Nanshan, head of the Chinese Medical Association and director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases, has issued a warning: Guangdong is facing an especially serious situation in tackling avian flu this year because outbreaks of the disease have occurred in many surrounding countries. In particular, monitoring needs to be strengthened in rural areas and effective drugs should be stockpiled to prevent outbreaks.

"The World Health Organization [WHO] has issued relatively urgent warning signals. Guangdong should prevent avian flu even more," Zhong said at the 2005 National Academic Seminar on Influenza Vaccinology held in Guangzhou yesterday. Zhong said he had seen news earlier about the death of a five-year-old boy from avian flu in Indonesia and that country's plan to slaughter poultry on a large scale in seriously affected areas. Moreover, avian flu outbreaks had also occurred in Vietnam and Cambodia, countries very close to Guangdong geographically, Zhong said, and Guangdong therefore faces an especially serious situation in preventing avian flu.

Zhong believes that avian flu may first and mostly appear in rural areas, such as among people who frequently come into contact with birds. Currently, only vaccines for birds are available, and no vaccine applicable to human influenza has been created yet. Only the early detection of outbreaks is the best way to reduce losses. He said: In the detection of avian flu, the foremost task is to find infected individuals in rural areas so that various measures can be taken in the earliest period of an outbreak. It is difficult, however, for the current outbreak reporting systems in rural areas, set up at the county level, to meet such a requirement. Setting up a more close-knit monitoring network is a matter of urgency.

The Information Times [Xinxi Shibao] reported: Regarding recent news that countries in Europe and America had started stockpiling effective drugs for avian flu, Zhong said: Guangdong also has some stocks of the drugs but the volume is not large and should be increased appropriately. So far, 97 avian flu cases have been reported in the world and 53 of them have died, setting a mortality rate of 54.6 per cent. The use of effective drugs within 48 hours after the onset of the disease can effectively lower the mortality rate, and this is also the treatment method recommended by the WHO.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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