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November 16, 2005
China Confirms 3 Cases of Bird Flu in Humans
By KEITH BRADSHER
GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 16 - The Chinese government announced late today that it had confirmed the country's first three cases of bird flu in people, an admission that marked a potentially far-reaching change in how China handles the emergence of new diseases.
The handling of all three cases contrasted markedly with China's handling two years ago of SARS, which provincial Chinese officials here in southeastern China concealed for four months until the disease became an international epidemic. But when reports began circulating late last month of several mysterious illnesses in central China and provincial officials there were reluctant to investigate, Beijing authorities responded by seeking help from the World Health Organization and quickly sending in a team of national and overseas investigators.
"I think this is exactly what countries should do," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman at the Geneva headquarters of the W.H.O., a United Nations agency. "They should be transparent. They should report early."
China's Health Ministry said this evening that bird flu had been confirmed in a 9-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister in central China's Hunan Province and in a 36-year-old woman in Anhui Province in east-central China. The boy has recovered and was released from the hospital last weekend; the girl and the woman died.
In confirming all three cases as infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Chinese authorities went even further than the W.H.O. was willing to go.
The W.H.O. agreed late today that the boy and the woman, a teacher, had been infected with bird flu. But the sister's body was cremated before her case became the subject of international medical attention, and the W.H.O. concluded that samples drawn before she died were not adequate for determining whether she had bird flu.
Establishing whether the boy and his sister both had the disease is important because scientists are watching for whether the disease develops the capacity to spread easily from person to person, which could lead to a global epidemic in people. The W.H.O. has concluded that most human infections so far have come directly from birds, but has acknowledged that it is very difficult to determine the sources of infection when multiple family members fall ill.
The family members are likely to have been exposed to the same birds as well as one another. The W.H.O. is still working with Chinese officials to investigate the illnesses of the boy and girl.
At a conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Dr. Qi Xiaoqiu, the director general of the department for disease prevention and control at China's Health Ministry, criticized the medical procedures followed in Hunan Province. "Some of their methodologies in taking samples were pretty problematic," he said.
Dr. Qi had also said at the conference that it was "highly probable" that the boy and girl had been infected with bird flu.
China becomes the fifth country to confirm human cases of bird flu since the beginning of last year, following Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Hong Kong, a fairly autonomous territory of China, had 18 cases and 6 deaths in 1997 but cut short a possible pandemic by quickly slaughtering all poultry in the territory.
The earliest known cases of H5N1 virus were found in birds here in southeastern China in 1996, and researchers have been finding the virus practically every year since then. The widespread presence of the disease in Chinese poultry has prompted suspicions that human cases were also occurring in China but were not being reported to national authorities by local and provincial authorities leery of censure for failing to protect public health.
China has a Byzantine system of separate health departments and centers for disease control at the county, prefecture, provincial and national levels, plus additional health departments at the village and township level. Coordination among these many agencies has often been a problem.
Dr. Qi said on Tuesday that the national Health Ministry had imposed strict rules in the last two years demanding that infectious diseases be reported, to the point that the Health Ministry now receives 10,000 reports a day of everything from human influenza to viral hepatitis. Every one of these reports is reviewed, Dr. Qi insisted.
"In the past, our reporting system was not very effective or very timely," he said. "But we learned our lesson from SARS."
China Confirms 3 Cases of Bird Flu in Humans
By KEITH BRADSHER
GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 16 - The Chinese government announced late today that it had confirmed the country's first three cases of bird flu in people, an admission that marked a potentially far-reaching change in how China handles the emergence of new diseases.
The handling of all three cases contrasted markedly with China's handling two years ago of SARS, which provincial Chinese officials here in southeastern China concealed for four months until the disease became an international epidemic. But when reports began circulating late last month of several mysterious illnesses in central China and provincial officials there were reluctant to investigate, Beijing authorities responded by seeking help from the World Health Organization and quickly sending in a team of national and overseas investigators.
"I think this is exactly what countries should do," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman at the Geneva headquarters of the W.H.O., a United Nations agency. "They should be transparent. They should report early."
China's Health Ministry said this evening that bird flu had been confirmed in a 9-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister in central China's Hunan Province and in a 36-year-old woman in Anhui Province in east-central China. The boy has recovered and was released from the hospital last weekend; the girl and the woman died.
In confirming all three cases as infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the Chinese authorities went even further than the W.H.O. was willing to go.
The W.H.O. agreed late today that the boy and the woman, a teacher, had been infected with bird flu. But the sister's body was cremated before her case became the subject of international medical attention, and the W.H.O. concluded that samples drawn before she died were not adequate for determining whether she had bird flu.
Establishing whether the boy and his sister both had the disease is important because scientists are watching for whether the disease develops the capacity to spread easily from person to person, which could lead to a global epidemic in people. The W.H.O. has concluded that most human infections so far have come directly from birds, but has acknowledged that it is very difficult to determine the sources of infection when multiple family members fall ill.
The family members are likely to have been exposed to the same birds as well as one another. The W.H.O. is still working with Chinese officials to investigate the illnesses of the boy and girl.
At a conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Dr. Qi Xiaoqiu, the director general of the department for disease prevention and control at China's Health Ministry, criticized the medical procedures followed in Hunan Province. "Some of their methodologies in taking samples were pretty problematic," he said.
Dr. Qi had also said at the conference that it was "highly probable" that the boy and girl had been infected with bird flu.
China becomes the fifth country to confirm human cases of bird flu since the beginning of last year, following Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. Hong Kong, a fairly autonomous territory of China, had 18 cases and 6 deaths in 1997 but cut short a possible pandemic by quickly slaughtering all poultry in the territory.
The earliest known cases of H5N1 virus were found in birds here in southeastern China in 1996, and researchers have been finding the virus practically every year since then. The widespread presence of the disease in Chinese poultry has prompted suspicions that human cases were also occurring in China but were not being reported to national authorities by local and provincial authorities leery of censure for failing to protect public health.
China has a Byzantine system of separate health departments and centers for disease control at the county, prefecture, provincial and national levels, plus additional health departments at the village and township level. Coordination among these many agencies has often been a problem.
Dr. Qi said on Tuesday that the national Health Ministry had imposed strict rules in the last two years demanding that infectious diseases be reported, to the point that the Health Ministry now receives 10,000 reports a day of everything from human influenza to viral hepatitis. Every one of these reports is reviewed, Dr. Qi insisted.
"In the past, our reporting system was not very effective or very timely," he said. "But we learned our lesson from SARS."
