.16-year-old Chinese boy dies from H5N1 bird flu
BEIJING (AP) - China's top health official on Tuesday ordered stronger measures to prevent the spread of bird flu as the country announced its third fatality from the H5N1 virus in a month.
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, said the cases were a "perfectly normal occurrence" during colder months.
Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu said health departments across the nation need to pay "great attention" to stepping up efforts to stop the disease before it sickens more people, especially at the peak of the Lunar New Year travel rush, when tens of millions of people were making their way home to rural areas.
"It is the high season for human cases of bird flu. There is a severe need for the prevention of more cases," Chen said in a conference call to ministry officials.
He said health officials need to be made fully aware of the risk and harm associated with bird flu, increase monitoring, strengthen clinical diagnoses and treatment, and report outbreaks in a timely manner.
His call to action came as state media announced the death of a 16-year-old student in Hunan province in central China. The boy, surnamed Wu, had been in critical condition and died Tuesday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
He fell ill on Jan. 8 in his hometown in the neighboring province of Guizhou and was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua, a city in Hunan, on Jan. 16, when his condition worsened. He had contact with dead poultry, the report said without giving other details.
The two other bird flu deaths were a 27-year-old woman in Shandong province in the country's east who died on Saturday and a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing on Jan. 5.
Until this month, no new human infections had been reported in China since February 2007.
Peter Cordingley, the WHO's Asia spokesman, said the latest cases were a "perfectly predictable event.""The virus always starts to get active this time of year," he said.
According to the WHO, bird flu has killed 249 people worldwide since 2003. The tally does not include Tuesday's death in China, where a total of 34 infections have been reported.
The disease remains hard for humans to catch, but scientists have warned if outbreaks among poultry are not controlled, the virus may mutate into a form more easily passed between people, potentially sparking a pandemic.
MyWay
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, said the cases were a "perfectly normal occurrence" during colder months.
Chinese Health Minister Chen Zhu said health departments across the nation need to pay "great attention" to stepping up efforts to stop the disease before it sickens more people, especially at the peak of the Lunar New Year travel rush, when tens of millions of people were making their way home to rural areas.
"It is the high season for human cases of bird flu. There is a severe need for the prevention of more cases," Chen said in a conference call to ministry officials.
He said health officials need to be made fully aware of the risk and harm associated with bird flu, increase monitoring, strengthen clinical diagnoses and treatment, and report outbreaks in a timely manner.
His call to action came as state media announced the death of a 16-year-old student in Hunan province in central China. The boy, surnamed Wu, had been in critical condition and died Tuesday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
He fell ill on Jan. 8 in his hometown in the neighboring province of Guizhou and was transferred to a hospital in Huaihua, a city in Hunan, on Jan. 16, when his condition worsened. He had contact with dead poultry, the report said without giving other details.
The two other bird flu deaths were a 27-year-old woman in Shandong province in the country's east who died on Saturday and a 19-year-old woman who died in Beijing on Jan. 5.
Until this month, no new human infections had been reported in China since February 2007.
Peter Cordingley, the WHO's Asia spokesman, said the latest cases were a "perfectly predictable event.""The virus always starts to get active this time of year," he said.
According to the WHO, bird flu has killed 249 people worldwide since 2003. The tally does not include Tuesday's death in China, where a total of 34 infections have been reported.
The disease remains hard for humans to catch, but scientists have warned if outbreaks among poultry are not controlled, the virus may mutate into a form more easily passed between people, potentially sparking a pandemic.
MyWay
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