AFP Photo
A vendor prepares to weigh a
chicken at a streetside stall on the outskirts of
Anqing, in eastern China's Ahnui province. China
said it had confirmed the sixth human case of bird
flu, while announcing the first outbreak of the
feared virus among poultry for more than two weeks,
both in the same remote rural county.
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BEIJING (AFP) - China said it had confirmed the sixth human case
of bird flu, while announcing the first outbreak of the feared
virus among poultry for more than two weeks, both in the same
remote rural county.
The patient, identified as a 35-year-old man surnamed Guo, was a
peddler in Suichuan county in Jiangxi, a province in east China
so far not mentioned in reports of the spread of the deadly H5N1
virus across the nation this autumn.
"The virus is of course entrenched in the environment, not only
in China but in many other countries," said Roy Wadia, a
Beijing-based spokesman for the World Health Organization.
Guo, who fell ill on December 4 with fever and symptoms of
pneumonia, is now being treated at a local hospital, state-run
Xinhua news agency reported, citing the health ministry.
The China Disease Prevention and Control Center tested samples
from Guo and found he was infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus,
according to Xinhua. The report gave no details of his present
condition. |
Local health authorities had taken measures to curb the spread
of the virus, and people who had close contact with the patient
were under strict medical observation, with no abnormal clinical
symptoms found, Xinhua said.
While it was the first human bird flu case in Jiangxi reported
by China, Guo's home county is located near the border with
Hunan province, where at least one human case of bird flu has
been detected in recent weeks.
Two other cases, both women who later died, have been confirmed
in east China's Anhui province. One further human case has been
confirmed in Liaoning province in the northeast and one in
Guangxi region in the south.
Despite the toll, China is seen as having escaped relatively
lightly from the bird flu virus, which has killed more than 70
people throughout Asia since 2003.
Even so, China is seen as a potential flashpoint for a feared
global pandemic because it has the world's biggest poultry
population combined with often primitive farming conditions
where humans and animals live in close proximity.
Earlier Thursday, the agriculture ministry reported an outbreak
of bird flu among ducks on a poultry farm, also in Suichuan
county.
A total of 1,640 ducks had died from a virus that was confirmed
as the lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza earlier in the day,
the agriculture ministry said on its website.
The local veterinary authorities proceeded according to standard
operating procedure, culling 150,000 domestic birds within a
three-kilometer (two-mile) radius of the duck farm, according to
the ministry.
It is the 31st outbreak of bird flu in China this year,
according to previously published government data.
The most recent outbreak before the one reported Thursday was
announced on November 30 in the westernmost region of Xinjiang.
The nation's chief veterinary officer Jia Youling told reporters
on Wednesday that the absence of bird flu for more than two
weeks signaled "initial success" in the endeavor to control the
virus.
He also said that the possibility remained of sporadic outbreaks
in the coming months, partly because of the "primitive
management" of many backyard farms in China, making epidemic
prevention difficult.
"We are still facing great challenges of bird flu control," Jia
said.
One of the difficulties Beijing officials are facing is keeping
an eye on everything that happens in the continent-sized
country, in the face of unwillingness from farmers scared of
losing their livelihood from cullings.
Jiangxi county is in a part of China that the authorities have
had trouble monitoring and controlling for centuries, making it
a center of underground communist activity in the 1930s.
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