WHO says China needs to improve reporting bird flu in rural areas
The Star, 19 May 2006

HONG KONG (AP) - China has gotten better at reporting diseases in cities since the SARS crisis in 2003, but bird flu is showing that it still needs to improve handling of outbreaks in the countryside, a WHO director for Asia said Thursday. 

Speaking to reporters at the launch of the World Health Organization's book "SARS: How a Global Epidemic was Stopped,'' Dr. Shigeru Omi, the regional director for the Western Pacific for the World Health Organization, said Beijing had become more open since it initially held back on providing information to outside health officials at during the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak three years ago. 

"I think I have to praise China for (its) efforts to be very transparent  (with bird flu),    and

actually we received information a lot more promptly than with SARS,'' he said. 

The 300-page book describes how Chinese health officials often declined to provide WHO experts information and access as the potentially fatal disease spread from China to the rest of the world. 

Omi said he thinks China has learned valuable lessons from SARS. 

"China's health sector and agriculture sector have made tremendous achievements, both in terms of sharing information and transparency,'' he said. 

But he added that much of the improvement was in the cities because SARS was largely an urban disease. 

The advancements haven't trickled down to the countryside, where bird flu is a problem, he said. 

"Efforts were made to strengthen the urban setting, but so far efforts made after SARS have not benefited the infrastructure development at the grass roots level.'' 

He said rural areas in China have generally been slow to report cases, but that it was largely because of a lack of human resources and technical abilities. 

"There's a bit of reservation to report because they are afraid of stigma or they are afraid of reporting because of lack of compensation,'' Omi said, adding that he didn't believe there was an "intentional cover-up.''