New death but China says no human bird flu
The Sun, 28 Oct 2005

HONGKONG: A girl with flu-like symptoms has died in a Chinese village where a bird flu outbreak had been reported, a Hong Kong newspaper said yesterday, but Beijing said it had received no reports of human cases of the virus.

Three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in what appeared to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia of bird flu, which experts fear could mutate to spread easily from human to human and become a pandemic.

Governments around the world are nervously monitoring borders, testing arriving wild birds and clamping down on the import and movement of birds and poultry, with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia among the latest to announce special measures.

And Indonesia was investigating possible new bird flu cases on the holiday island of Bali after the death of several domestic fowl.

He Yin, 12, and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago after eating a chicken that had died from an unspecified illness in the mainland Chinese village of Wantang, Hongkong's South China Morning Post reported.

So far there was no evidence linking the girl's death to the outbreak of bird flu in the village in Hunan province and none of the adults in her family had shown any flu symptoms, the newspaper said.

Doctors told her family she had died from fever.

China reported an outbreak of bird flu in Hunan this week following cases in Inner Mongolia in the north and Anhui province in the east. It said the outbreaks had been brought under control.

The deadly H5N1 avian flu strain has killed more than 60 people in four countries in Asia and been found among birds in Croatia,   Romania,   Turkey and

Russia, but no human cases have been reported in Europe.

There is no evidence yet that the disease can be transmitted among humans, but experts fear it is only a matter of time before that happens.

Other deaths have been reported in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

A senior World Bank official said on Wednesday that officials from all over the globe would meet in Geneva early next month to discuss setting up a global fund to tackle the threat.

French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said on Wednesday that three tourists who had visited a bird zoo in Thailand were being tested for bird flu back home on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion.

Initial test results were positive but fuller results were not ready yet, Bertrand said.

Germany and Greece were also testing dead birds.

Britain has said an imported parrot that died of H5N1 might not have been the only bird in quarantine to have had the virus, and others were being tested.

South Pacific leaders ended a two-day summit in Port Moresby yesterday with a plan to pool resources to combat bird flu.

Australia, the largest member of the 16nation Pacific Forum, will contribute A$8 million (RM22.48 million) to fight an outbreak of the disease in nations like Papua New Guinea, which shares a border with Indonesia where four people have died of avian flu. ­ Reuters