China confirms human bird flu case from 2003
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China confirmed on Tuesday that the country’s first human case of the H5N1 bird flu virus in 2003 was two years earlier than originally reported, prompting the UN’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.
Eight Chinese researchers published a letter in The New England Journal of Medicine in June saying a 24-year-old 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 UN’s World Health Organisation, Xinhua said.
“It speaks about the need for really close collaboration and transparent communication between various players within the government structure,” said Roy Wadia, the WHO’s spokesman in Beijing.
“The Ministry of Health says it was not aware of the man’s H5N1-positive tests until the letter came out in the journal in June,” he added.
“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 the H5N1 virus but did not tell the health department until much later.
China’s health ministry said there was no cause for alarm.
“Although this human infection confirmed in the mainland was two years earlier than previous figures, it has no indication that China had an outbreak of bird flu in 2003,” spokesman Mao Qun’an was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying.
“People need not panic,” he said. “The surveillance capability of bird flu in the country is significantly strengthened nowadays in comparison with two years ago.”
BREWING
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.
Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong, said this incident was a lesson and reminder for China to be honest, transparent and more forthcoming with information.
Experts in Hong Kong have long insisted that the virus has always been present in mainland China, but Chinese authorities have denied that.
Even after several members of a Hong Kong family contracted the virus in Fujian province in southern China in February 2003, the incident was swept under the carpet.
“If it had been more forthcoming, so much more could have been done for the rest of the world. But now, the virus has spread to three continents,” Lo said.
“It’s a lesson to be learnt.”
The H5N1 virus made its first known jump to humans in Hong Kong in late 1997, and then more or less petered out until it re-emerged in parts of Southeast Asia in late 2003, when it killed three people in Vietnam.
The virus is known to have infected 19 people in China since last year, killing 12 of them, according to WHO.
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