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Mary Ann Benitez

City's suspected first human case brings HK warning to cross-border travellers

Shenzhen authorities fear the border city has its first human bird-flu case - a 31-year-old man who was last night critically ill in hospital with an H5 strain of flu.

Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection announced the development last night, after being notified by the Guangdong Health Department and the Ministry of Health in Beijing.

Close contacts of the patient were found to be healthy, the Hong Kong centre was told.

'Even though Hong Kong has been free from human avian influenza cases since early 2003, members of the public should be vigilant given the large volume of population flow between Guangdong and Hong Kong,' the centre said.

The Guangdong provincial information office named the patient as Jiang O and said he was a truck driver for a company in the city's Longgang district.

He had shown symptoms of bird flu on June 3, including fever and coughing, it said. Xinhua said he had sought treatment at the Shenzhen People's Hospital on Friday,  but had maintained a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius despite intensive treatment since his admission.  He was moved to the   Donghu hospital for infectious diseases on Monday, it said.

The information office said investigations showed the patient had not been in direct contact with poultry before falling ill.

Hong Kong authorities said    that in the days before  falling ill, the man had bought vegetables several times at a wet market which also sells chicken. He had also eaten chicken, it said.

However, Xinhua reported that he bought a chicken at a wet market near his home two weeks before developing flu symptoms.

A chicken vendor at the Xiangmei market in Shenzhen said they had not been told about the case.

'There were more hygiene inspections in the last few days than usual. But nobody explained to us why,' the vendor said.

Security at the Donghu hospital was strengthened yesterday. Security guards barred entry  and punched reporters  trying to approach the premises.

'The hospital has ordered us to clean up,' one guard said.

The hospital  and the Shenzhen Health Bureau both denied there was a suspected bird flu case in the city. But a spokesman for the Shenzhen Municipal Disease Control and Prevention Centre confirmed there was a suspected case.

'Shenzhen has had several suspected cases before but these were all found to be false alarms later,' the spokesman said.

If the man is confirmed to be suffering from H5N1, he would be the 19th person on the mainland infected with the deadly bird flu virus.  Twelve have died. The last reported case was in April in Sichuan .

The World Health Organisation's Beijing representative, Hank Bekedam, said the case was worrying. If confirmed, it would be the 18th human infection not associated with any apparent outbreak of flu in poultry.

The case comes nearly three months after Hong Kong resumed imports of live chickens from the mainland  on March 26 after a three-week suspension  following the death of a man in Guangzhou from H5N1 flu.

Hong Kong  is suspending  poultry imports from Hungary after an H5N1 outbreak in poultry there. The city imported 2,200 tonnes of frozen poultry from the Central European country last year.

Flu facts

For more information about bird flu, see the Centre for Health Protection website at www.chp.gov.hk, or call the 24-hour Health Education Hotline of the Department of Health on 2833-0111



Shenzhen man feared to have bird flu