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China reports 6th human case of bird flu
(Chinadaily.com.cn/AFP)
Updated: 2005-12-15 21:29
A new human case of bird flu was reported in Suichuan County, east China's
Jiangxi Province, according to a Ministry of Health announcement Thursday
evening.
It said the patient, a 35-year-old man, is a private vendor.
He developed symptoms of high fever on December 4 and was admitted into a local
hospital, a Xinhua dispatch says.
The ministry experts confirmed the human case of bird flu, and the
ministry has reported it to the World Health Organization and noticed Hong Kong,
Macao and Taiwan regions, as well as some countries.
He is the sixth human case of bird flu reported in China.
Also on
December 15, an outbreak of bird flu in the same county was confirmed by the
Ministry of Agriculture, the first reported outbreak for more than two weeks.
The outbreak, at a farm where 1,640 ducks had died from the disease, was
confirmed as the lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza earlier Thursday, the
agriculture ministry said on its website.
Nurses cordon a
corridor inside a hospital as part of a drill on the outbreak of bird flu
in Hong Kong November 8, 2005. [Reuters] | The
duck farm was located in Quanjiang village, part of Suichuan county in the west
of Jiangxi, near the border with Hunan province where at least one human case of
bird flu has been detected in recent weeks.
The local veterinary authorities proceeded according to standard operating
procedure, culling 150,000 domestic birds within a 3-kilometer radius of the
outbreak, according to the ministry.
This marks the 31st outbreak of bird
flu in China this year, according to previously published government data.
The most recent outbreak before Thursday's was announced on November 30 in
the westernmost region of Xinjiang.
On Wednesday the nation's chief veterinary officer told reporters the absence
of bird flu for more than a fortnight signaled "initial success" in the endeavor
to control bird flu.
Despite initial success, sporadic cases are likely to emerge in winter and
next spring, which means infection control is still a challenge, Jia Youling
told a press conference in Beijing on Wednesday.
"Winter and spring are peak seasons for bird flu, and 60 per cent of China's
domestic birds are raised on backyard farms with inadequate management, making
epidemic prevention difficult," said Jia, also chief of the Bureau of Animal
Health under the Ministry of Agriculture.
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