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WHO Director Jong Wook Lee speaks during the last day of a global meeting on avian influenza, at the WHO headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland, November 9, 2005. (ŠAP/WWP)
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16 November 2005
Human Cases of Bird Flu Infection Confirmed by China, November 15, 2005 (Three cases of infection, one death reported; bird immunization begins)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington – Human cases of a highly infectious strain of avian influenza have turned up in China, making it the fifth nation to confirm the appearance of the disease in people.
News reports attribute confirmation of the human cases to China’s Ministry of Health. Two cases were reported in Hunan province, resulting in the death of a 12-year-old girl. A brother of the deceased also was infected with H5N1, but survived and has been released from the hospital.
A third case is reported in China’s Anhui province. Other cases of respiratory illness are being investigated as possible cases of H5N1 that health officials fear could trigger a global pandemic of disease if the virus mutates to become easily transmissible from person-to-person.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet confirmed these cases, a sometimes time-consuming procedure after an initial report of disease from local or regional health officials.
In the almost two years since the H5N1 strain began causing the most widespread outbreaks of avian influenza ever seen, 126 humans have been infected, 64 of them fatally, according to the WHO count. The newly reported cases from China would boost those numbers.
The human cases in China are significant because of what they may portend about the growing possibility of a human pandemic. The chances for the H5N1 virus to become efficiently transferred among humans increase as bird-human proximity increases.
China has become a significant poultry producer in recent years, and has had numerous outbreaks of bird flu among domestic flocks and wild birds since early 2004. Those outbreaks provide greater opportunity for humans to be exposed to the virus, and the possible mutation of the virus making it contagious among humans.
In view of these risks, China announced November 15 that it would undertake the vaccination of billions of domestic birds to prevent infection. It is a massive project, agriculture experts say, but also one that might help cushion Chinese poultry producers from the serious economic losses that result from the destruction of birds.
At least 150 million birds have been destroyed by the disease itself or by the culling of flocks that occurs to prevent its spread, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). For many small agriculture producers of East and Southeast Asia, the loss of their flocks can mean a loss of livelihood.
“Obviously for farmers – particularly poor rural farmers – this is their income,” said Jim Adams, the World Bank’s vice president for operations policy and country services. Adams has been the banks’ chief representative in world meetings on the issue, and he is urging donor support for compensation of farmers who lose their birds in order to help stop the spread of disease.
“If they are properly compensated and paid an appropriate market price for their animals, culling programs will be successful,” Adams said in a bank press release. “If they’re not properly compensated, experience shows, they’ll find another way of getting animals to market and the problem will expand.”
A meeting in Geneva ended November 9 with international partners, including the United States, agreeing that control of the disease in animals is the critical step in preventing a pandemic. (See related article.)
President Bush is proposing about $250 million in U.S. assistance to help bolster pandemic containment measures in China and the four other nations where human cases have occurred – Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. The proposal now pending before Congress calls for strengthening animal and human surveillance, developing behavior change communications, and building response capacity in the most-affected countries.
For additional information on the disease and efforts to combat it, see Bird Flu.
