China reports 18th human bird flu case

By Jerker Hellstrom

SHANGHAI — China announced on Thursday that an eight-year-old girl had caught H5N1 bird flu, reporting its second human case this month a day after a top WHO official warned the world to prepare for a long fight against the virus.

The flu’s spread has led to the death and culling of 200 million birds since late 2003, with scientists fearing the avian disease could mutate to a form easily passed among people, triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.

Britain and Ivory Coast prepared to start more poultry slaughtering after discovering outbreaks, although Britain said the virus it had detected at a chicken farm was probably not the H5N1 strain dangerous to humans.

China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted the country’s health minister as saying the infected girl, from the southeast Sichuan province, was being treated in a local hospital.

Confirming the report, the World Health Organization said in a statement the diagnosis brought China’s laboratory-confirmed cases to 18, of which 12 had been fatal.

"She developed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on April 16. She remains hospitalized," the WHO said.

On April 18, China’s Health Ministry announced the country’s 17th confirmed human H5N1 case, a migrant worker who died a day later.

A total of 205 people have been infected in nine countries, causing 113 deaths, since bird flu re-emerged in Asia in 2003, according to the WHO, a United Nations agency. Over the same period, the disease has spread among birds in 45 countries.

BIRD FLU FATIGUE?

In an interview with Reuters this week, the acting director of WHO’s global influenza program urged the world not to give in to a fatigue he said seemed to have affected the fight against bird flu.

Keiji Fukuda said the virus’s tenacity and persistence increased the risk that it might evolve into a pandemic.

Britain is to cull some 35,000 birds on a poultry farm in the east of the country after a strain of bird flu was detected in chickens.

Preliminary tests showed the virus was likely to be an H7 strain of bird flu, not H5N1, the government’s chief vet said.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said all birds on the farm near Norwich, an area home to some of Europe’s biggest poultry farms, would be killed as soon as possible as a precautionary measure.

Ivory Coast also prepared to slaughter chickens and tightened restrictions on poultry movement after reporting outbreaks in two parts of its main city Abidjan.

The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said late on Wednesday birds infected with H5N1 had been found in separate outbreaks in the Marcory Anoumabo and Treichville suburbs.

Two local clinics had made the diagnosis, which the OIE expected to be confirmed by its own laboratory in Padua, Italy.

"We are going to start killing all poultry in a 3 km (2 mile) radius around the site that has been declared positive," said Bakary Cisse, head of the government’s animal disease surveillance task force.

Myanmar appeared to have scored a success with its program of culling and restrictions in recent weeks, however, with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization agreeing with a decision to lift a ban on the sale and movement of poultry within days.

FAO chief technical adviser Ram Chaudhary said the tough restrictions were no longer necessary because no new outbreaks had been reported for three weeks.

"Myanmar was very strict. They had closed down the poultry markets. Nobody could prepare or sell chicken on the street," he said.