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Bird flu situation 'grim' as teen boy dies from H5N1
Source: Agencies/Shanghai Daily |
January 21, 2009, Wednesday
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Print Edition
CHINA'S health minister said yesterday that the country faces a "grim" situation as it tries to prevent people from being exposed to avian flu.
His comments came as a teenage boy infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus died yesterday in central China, the country's third fatality from the disease this month.
"It is the high season for human bird flu cases," said Health Minister Chen Zhu.
He ordered health departments across the country to double their efforts to combat the disease at a time when tens of millions of people are traveling between cities and rural hometowns for the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically features poultry feasts.
The latest victim, a 16-year-old student surnamed Wu, died yesterday in Huaihua, a city in Hunan Province, local health officials said. He fell ill on January 8 in his hometown in the neighboring province of Guizhou and was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua last Friday, when his condition worsened. He had been in contact with dead poultry.
The two other bird flu deaths were a 27-year-old woman in Shandong Province who died last Saturday and a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing on January 5.
Also yesterday, a 2-year-old girl who had been critically ill with the H5N1 virus in north China's Shanxi Province was still in a critical condition, doctors said. China Central Television said on its noon newscast that the girl had been to live poultry markets "many times" in Changsha when she lived with her parents in the capital city of Hunan.
The girl's mother died earlier this month from pneumonia after being exposed to poultry, a Hunan health bureau official said in an interview published yesterday in the China Business News newspaper. However, the official could not confirm a link to H5N1.
Most bird flu cases stem from exposure to sick birds, but human-to-human transmission of bird flu has happened about a dozen times in the past. In nearly every case, transmission occurred among blood relatives who had been in close contact, and the virus did not spread into the wider community.
"Whenever there is a case of humans contracting the H5N1 virus, there is a concern," said Nyka Alexander, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. "As long as H5N1 continues to circulate in poultry, there is the risk of human infection. This is why it is so important to treat each case seriously."
His comments came as a teenage boy infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus died yesterday in central China, the country's third fatality from the disease this month.
"It is the high season for human bird flu cases," said Health Minister Chen Zhu.
He ordered health departments across the country to double their efforts to combat the disease at a time when tens of millions of people are traveling between cities and rural hometowns for the Lunar New Year holiday, which typically features poultry feasts.
The latest victim, a 16-year-old student surnamed Wu, died yesterday in Huaihua, a city in Hunan Province, local health officials said. He fell ill on January 8 in his hometown in the neighboring province of Guizhou and was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua last Friday, when his condition worsened. He had been in contact with dead poultry.
The two other bird flu deaths were a 27-year-old woman in Shandong Province who died last Saturday and a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing on January 5.
Also yesterday, a 2-year-old girl who had been critically ill with the H5N1 virus in north China's Shanxi Province was still in a critical condition, doctors said. China Central Television said on its noon newscast that the girl had been to live poultry markets "many times" in Changsha when she lived with her parents in the capital city of Hunan.
The girl's mother died earlier this month from pneumonia after being exposed to poultry, a Hunan health bureau official said in an interview published yesterday in the China Business News newspaper. However, the official could not confirm a link to H5N1.
Most bird flu cases stem from exposure to sick birds, but human-to-human transmission of bird flu has happened about a dozen times in the past. In nearly every case, transmission occurred among blood relatives who had been in close contact, and the virus did not spread into the wider community.
"Whenever there is a case of humans contracting the H5N1 virus, there is a concern," said Nyka Alexander, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. "As long as H5N1 continues to circulate in poultry, there is the risk of human infection. This is why it is so important to treat each case seriously."
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