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China says
no human bird flu as village girl dies |
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BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Initial tests on a girl who died in a Chinese village affected by avian flu have turned out negative for the virus, but the result has to be confirmed, Hong Kong's Cable TV news channel said on Thursday. If the tests had proved positive it would have been China's first known human death from bird flu, which experts across the world fear could mutate to spread easily between humans and become a pandemic. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post had reported that 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 village of Wantang, in the southern province of Hunan. Quoting a government official in Hunan, Cable TV said the brother had also tested negative. Chinese officials said earlier that they had received no reports of human cases of the virus. "The Chinese government has already taken ... decisive measures to prevent bird flu and to share information with the international community," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. China reported the Hunan outbreak 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. Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier that his government |
was taking effective measures to prevent the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain, including massive culling of birds, quarantines, and vaccinations of residents in areas where there were outbreaks. The World Health Organization’s China representative said China would probably see more outbreaks. "In the winter, the virus can survive longer outside its own host ... so we expect more cases, especially in this part of the world," Henk Bekedam told Reuters. Bekedam added that in Europe, the virus could still be eliminated, but Asia's best hope was that it would be contained. 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. Indonesia, where at least four people have died from bird flu, was investigating possible new cases in poultry on the holiday island of Bali after the death of several domestic fowl, an Agriculture Ministry official said. NERVOUS MONITORING H5N1 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 easily among humans, but experts fear it is only a matter of time. China, with its huge numbers of both humans and poultry, often living close together, is seen as a major area of risk. In Vietnam, where bird flu has killed 41 people, a senior health official said the country would start making the anti-viral Tamiflu drug on its own if faced with a pandemic. The Asian Development Bank says even a relatively mild pandemic could cost Asia up to $110 billion from the effects of reduced consumption, investment and trade. Governments around the world are nervously monitoring borders, testing arriving wild birds and clamping down on the import and movement of birds and poultry. Philippine officials said on Thursday that they had stepped up surveillance of 55 wetlands across the country to try to prevent the entry of bird flu through migratory birds. South Pacific leaders ended a two-day summit in Port Moresby on Thursday with a plan to pool resources to combat bird flu. Australia, the largest member of the 16-nation Pacific Forum, is to contribute A$8 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. WHO's representative in Sri |
Lanka said birds migrating from Russia, where the virus has already killed wildfowl, could carry bird flu to Sri Lanka and to India, where officials were testing some birds. "The virus seems to be becoming increasingly aggressive and pathogenic," said Agostino Borra. "More types of wild and domestic birds are becoming infected." A senior World Bank official said on Wednesday that officials from all over the globe would meet on Nov. 7-9 in Geneva 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 Thai bird zoo were being tested for bird flu back home on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. But he cautioned against any "dramatization" of the situation. "What we are talking about today in Europe, is about the risk of a disease, of a virus that affects animals," he said. Britain has said an imported parrot that died of H5N1 might not have been the only bird in quarantine to have the virus, and others were being tested. The European Union said on Tuesday it was banning the import of captive birds as pets. WHO says all but six of its 52 European member states have developed plans to fight an influenza pandemic.
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