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China reports another human bird flu case

Posted on: Thursday, 15 December 2005, 12:51 CST

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)

Source: REUTERS

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