Concern over new bird flu case

A Chinese village where a 10-year-old girl fell ill with bird flu had not reported any poultry outbreaks, indicating the virus might be going undetected or unreported, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

WHO China representative Henk Bekedam said the circumstances, which had been found in other human cases both in China and in Southeast Asia, should be a warning that infections in people may not always be forewarned by mass deaths in animals.

"It's not always that clear that something is happening. Birds die. Poultry dies. And a farmer is used to birds sometimes dying. It's not always that clear that it is H5N1," Mr Bekedam told a meeting of the Foreign Correspondent's Club, referring to the strain deadly to humans.

China's Xinhua news agency reported the latest human case late on Tuesday, citing the Ministry of Health. The girl, from the southern Guangxi region, had been ill with pneumonia and fever since November 23 and was under emergency treatment in hospital, the report said.

Experts were investigating the source of the virus in the Guangxi girl, Xinhua news agency said.

None of China's reported outbreaks this year have been in Guangxi. But the county where the girl fell ill borders Hunan province, where a nine-year-old boy survived the disease. His dead sister is a suspected case.

China has also confirmed two human deaths from bird flu, both in the eastern province of Anhui.

China has seen some 30 outbreaks this year of the H5N1 strain. The disease mostly affects birds, but scientists fear it could mutate into a form that can pass easily between people, leading to a human influenza pandemic.

H5N1 is endemic in poultry in parts of Asia where it has infected more than 130 people altogether, killing 69.

The government has promised resources and openness in fighting bird flu after being widely criticised for an initial cover-up of the SARS virus in 2003. But Health Minister Gao Qiang has said rural doctors might be ill-equipped and ill-trained to detect cases.

Guangxi was embarking on a programme to improve training of medical workers and enhance public education, Xinhua news agency quoted Tan Mingjie, deputy head of the regional health bureau, as saying.