China reports another human bird flu case

BEIJING (Reuters) – A sixth person in China has become
infected with the potentially fatal bird flu virus, the
Ministry of Health said on Thursday.

The latest victim is a 35-year-old man in Suichuan County
of Jiangxi Province, east China, the official Xinhua news
agency reported. The World Health Organization (WHO) said it
was aware of the case.

“He is apparently in critical condition in hospital,” WHO
spokeswoman Maria Cheng said.

“Our office in Beijing was informed of this today. It is in
a province that hasn’t identified human cases before but it is
somebody who seems to have a history of exposure to poultry,”
Cheng added from the WHO’s Geneva headquarters.

The H5N1 bird flu virus is endemic in poultry in parts of
Asia and has killed 71 people in the region out of a total of
138 known human cases since late 2003.

H5N1 remains hard for humans to catch, but there are fears
it could mutate into a form that can pass easily from person,
sparking an influenza pandemic in which millions could die.

Xinhua said the patient was surnamed Guo and fell ill on
December 4, with fever and symptoms of pneumonia. It described
him as a peddler.

Earlier on Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture said a new
bird flu case had been confirmed in Guo’s village after the
death of 1,640 ducks raised by a fellow villager, Xinhua
reported.

The provincial veterinarian department suspected H5N1 was
the killer and a state avian flu laboratory confirmed the
suspicion on Thursday, the ministry said.

Veterinarian authorities in Jiangxi culled 15,000 poultry
within three km (two miles) of the affected area as soon as the
outbreak was reported.

China, the world’s most populous nation, had reported five
other cases of H5N1 among humans, including the deaths of two
women poultry workers in the eastern province of Anhui last
month.

Beijing has pledged openness in fighting bird flu after it
was widely criticized for its cover-up of the SARS virus in
2003, but Health Minister Gao Qiang has said rural doctors
might be ill-equipped or ill-trained to detect cases.

China has announced plans to vaccinate billions of birds to
contain the virus and has launched a campaign to encourage
farmers and local officials to report new cases.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)