Bird Flu Deaths

Expert says bird flu has killed 300 people in ChinaA respected Japanese scientist, who works with the World Health Organization, says bird flu deaths of H5N1 bird flu in China have reached 300, including seven cases caused by human-to-human transmission.

He says he was given the information in confidence by Chinese colleagues who have been threatened with arrest if they disclosed the extent of the problem.

The allegations, which he revealed at a meeting in Germany, contrast sharply with China’s official position. It reports three confirmed cases of H5N1 in people: a boy in Hunan province who recovered, and two women who died in Anhui province, the latest of which was announced on Thursday. There may be another probable case in Hunan.

But Masato Tashiro, head of virology at Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Disease – a WHO-collaborating centre for bird flu – told the meeting of virologists in Marburg, Germany, on 19 November that “we have been systematically deceived” about bird flu deaths. His comments were reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

He told the stunned meeting, called to mark the retirement of a senior German virologist, that there have been “several dozen” outbreaks in people, 300 confirmed bird flu deaths and 3000 people placed in isolation with suspected cases.

Severe restrictions

Tashiro could not be reached for comment today. The newspaper reported that he said the numbers for bird flu deaths came from sources he trusted, while he was in Hunan province for the WHO, working with Chinese investigators on the recent H5N1 outbreak there.

He said five Chinese medical personnel had been arrested for trying to report these cases, according to the paper. China enforced severe restrictions on the investigation and reporting of suspected cases of bird flu in June 2005.

“These rumours have been investigated, and we’ve been told by the Chinese Ministry of Health that there’s no foundation to reports that there have been this number of bird flu deaths in China,” Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told New Scientist.

Emergency workers

Virologists consider the relative absence of human cases of bird flu in China unusual, given its widespread infection in birds. China has reported poultry outbreaks in twenty counties all across the country since mid-October, the latest being on Thursday.

The WHO told the official Chinese news agency Xinhua last week that the virus causing the outbreak in Hunan is the same as the one in Vietnam and Thailand, where H5N1 has caused 113 confirmed human cases and 55 bird flu deaths so far.

There are other unconfirmed reports of human cases in China. Boxun News, an independent Chinese website, reported this week that 77 workers brought in to help control rampant H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in Liaoning province in November have died of the virus, listing 14 names.

Boxun reported the extent of the outbreak in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in central China in May, and alleged then that 120 people had been put in stringent hospital isolation in a nearby town, possibly with bird flu.

Bird Flu Death in China

The Chinese Ministry of Health says tests indicate H5N1 bird flu caused the death of a 12-year-old girl in China.

The death would be the first reported bird flu death in China.

The girl, her brother and a school teacher all fell ill after having contact with dead birds in a village with a recent outbreak of H5N1 bird flu among poultry.

The brother and school teacher are recovering.

The ministry also reports that 192 people in the area are under medical observation.

Initially, the Chinese government announced the 3 Chinese citizens tested negative for the bird flu. Over the weekend, the Health Ministry conceded that the bird flu “could not be ruled out.”

China is enlisting the support of the World Health Organization to determine if a recent death and 3 recent pneumonia cases are the result of the H5N1 bird flu in China.

China's cooperation with the WHO is a new development.

Officials at the WHO's Bejing office report the WHO and the Chinese governments are discussing what the role of the WHO should be in China's investigation of the possible bird flu death.

The cooperation comes with a shift in in Health Ministry's approach to the bird flu in China.

The Minister recently emphasized the importance of publicizing prevention knowledge and cooperating with international and regional organizations to prevent bird flu deaths in China.

As of 7 November, the World Health Organization had reported 5 bird flu deaths In Indonesia, 41 bird flu deaths in Vietnam, 13 bird flu deaths in Thailand, and 4 bird flu deaths in Cambodia

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