China rules out bird flu in girl's death (Reuters) Updated: 2005-10-27 21:39
Pneumonia was the cause of death of a 12-year-old girl
in a village in central China where an outbreak of bird flu was confirmed
earlier this week, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.
Chinese health inspector disinfects a
truck at a bird flu-hit area in Xiangtan, central China's Hunan province,
October 27, 2005. [newsphoto]
The report cited local health officials in Hunan, where some 545 chickens and
ducks died from the H5N1 virus, as saying initial blood tests showed the
12-year-old had tested negative for bird flu.
Scientists fear the disease, which is endemic in poultry in China, could
mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans, possibly triggering a
pandemic.
The girl, He Yin, from Xiangtan County near the provincial capital of
Changsha, fell ill and died after eating a chicken that died from an unspecified
illness.
Her 10-year-old brother was also sick, but Hong Kong's Cable TV said he too
had tested negative for bird flu.
If the tests had proved positive it would have been China's first known human
death from bird flu.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post had reported that the girl and her
brother fell ill about a week ago after eating a chicken that had died from an
unspecified illness in the village of Wantang, in the southern province of
Hunan.
Chinese officials said earlier that they had received no reports of human
cases of the virus.
"The Chinese government has already taken ... decisive measures to prevent
bird flu and to share information with the international community," Foreign
Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told a regular news briefing in Beijing on
Thursday.
China reported the Hunan outbreak this week following cases in Inner Mongolia
in the north and Anhui province in the east. It said the outbreaks had been
brought under control.
Premier Wen Jiabao said earlier that his government was taking effective
measures to prevent the spread of the deadly H5N1 strain, including massive
culling of birds, quarantines, and vaccinations of residents in areas where
there were outbreaks.
Three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in
what appeared to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia of bird flu,
which experts fear could mutate to spread easily from human to human and become
a pandemic.
Indonesia, where at least four people have died from bird flu, was
investigating possible new cases in poultry on the holiday island of Bali after
the death of several domestic fowl, an Agriculture Ministry official said.
|