Tests confirm 2003 mainland bird flu death
The first human bird-flu case on the mainland occurred two years earlier than previously recorded, authorities said yesterday as they announced tests had confirmed a soldier who died in Beijing in November 2003 had the H5N1 virus.
The retrospective diagnosis prompted the World Health Organisation to urge the mainland to improve its bird flu reporting system.
The ministry's confirmation means the current H5N1 outbreak in East Asia, thought to have begun in South Korea in December 2003 and to have spread to humans in Vietnam a month later, started earlier.
The diagnosis has raised concerns other human bird-flu infections may have gone unnoticed before the mainland reported its first probable human infection last year - 12-year-old Hunan girl He Yin , who died on October 17.
Concerns have been expressed over the case of a Hong Kong family who visited Fujian in February 2003. A girl died there, and her brother and father were diagnosed with bird flu on their return home, where the father died. The cause of the girl's death was recorded as pneumonia, and mainland officials insisted the family did not catch the virus in Fujian.
The diagnosis of bird flu in the soldier came to light when eight mainland researchers, including military scientists, sent a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in June saying they had found flu genes while studying his infection. The 24-year-old had initially been thought to have Sars - though Beijing had been declared Sars-free five months earlier. When tests came back negative for Sars, he was treated for pneumonia.
The Ministry of Health said on its website yesterday the soldier's diagnosis was confirmed through 'parallel laboratory tests' carried out by seven experts from the WHO, the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Academy of Military Medical Sciences. The case brings the number of human deaths from bird flu on the mainland to 13.
Ministry of Health spokesman Mao Qunan was quoted as saying there was no indication the mainland had a bird flu outbreak in 2003. He said people should not panic, as bird flu surveillance had strengthened since then.
Julie Hall, the WHO's China bird flu co-ordinator, said it had asked the government to re-examine other samples, but Beijing had said a better use of its resources would be to focus on more recent cases.
She said the case highlighted a gap in China's reporting system. 'Academic research institutes, for example the one that published [the letter] in the journal, are currently not covered. That's something they are going to mend very rapidly.'
University of Hong Kong microbiologist Guan Yi said it was possible there had been other human bird flu cases on the mainland before 2003.
Former medical legislator Lo Wing-lok said the central government needed to follow up the case of the Hong Kong family.
Attempts to contact some of the eight researchers were unsuccessful.
Additional reporting by Josephine Ma.
