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China
Reports 6th Human Case of Bird Flu |
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BEIJING (AP) -- China reported its sixth human bird flu case Friday as Indonesia awaited tests that could confirm its tenth human victim. Chinese state media said a 35-year-old man in eastern China had become infected with the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of the virus after an outbreak was reported in ducks in his village. The self-employed vendor, identified only by his surname, Guo, fell ill on Dec. 4 and was recovering in the hospital, the China Daily newspaper said. In Indonesia, local tests showed that a 39-year-old man had died of bird flu earlier this week in the capital, Jakarta, a senior health ministry official said Friday. If those results are confirmed by a World Health Organization-affiliated laboratory in Hong Kong, Indonesia's human toll from the disease would climb to 10, health official I Nyoman Kandun said. Blood samples have been taken from the Indonesian man's relatives and neighbors to see if they contracted the H5N1 strain. The virus has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia since 2003 and killed at least 71 people. Most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds. |
In China, some 1,640 ducks in Guo's village in the eastern province of Jiangxi have died of bird flu and 15,000 birds in the area have been destroyed to stop the outbreak, the China Daily said. The newspaper did not give details on when the outbreak occurred or if Guo had had contact with infected birds. "Local health authorities have taken measures to check the spread of the virus and the people who had close contact with the patient are under strict medical observation," the newspaper said. No abnormal symptoms have been found so far, it said. The Chinese government had said Wednesday that the country had not had a new case in poultry for the past 15 days. Experts say repeated outbreaks in poultry are increasing the risk that the virus could mutate into a form that would jump easily between people, possibly sparking a global pandemic. China has mounted an aggressive campaign to fight bird flu but the Jiangxi outbreak is China's 26th reported epidemic in poultry since Oct. 19. The government says 151,000 chickens, ducks and geese have died and another 22 million have |
been destroyed to stop the outbreaks. The government says it has nearly completed a campaign to vaccinate all of China's 5.2 billion domesticated birds against the virus. China's top veterinary official warned this week that the nation should brace for fresh outbreaks in the winter and spring. Jia Youling said the Lunar New Year holiday in January will raise the risk of the disease spreading because millions of people will travel and poultry shipments will surge to supply family banquets. Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Friday that she hoped to reach a deal with U.S. drug manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp. to develop a vaccine for the strain of bird flu found in her country. Kim C. Bush, Baxter's president for vaccine production, said Thursday that the company was considering the proposal.
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