A Chinese health worker sprays disinfectant in Taian county, Anshan city in Liaoning Province about 720 kms (450 miles) from Beijing today. A senior Chinese official says H5N1 antibodies have been detected in a nine-year-old boy in Hunan province, the first admission of a human bird flu infection in China, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday. China's Health Ministry could not immediately confirm the report. - REUTERS
BIRD FLU has killed at least one person in China, officials said on Wednesday, confirming the spread of the deadly virus into people in another large Asian country where it might prove hard to contain.
One victim in eastern Anhui had died and another in the central province of Hunan was suspected of having been killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
A second person diagnosed with bird flu in Hunan had recovered, it said.
The deadly H5N1 form of bird flu has already killed more than 60 people in Asia and is endemic in poultry in parts of the region. The previous confirmed deaths were in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia.
HARD TO CATCH
The virus remains hard for people to catch and is still essentially a disease in birds. However, experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, just like human influenza, putting millions of lives at risk.
World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Roy Wadia said it was no surprise that bird flu had spread to humans in the world's most populous nation.
"It's not a surprise. It shows that China, like other countries that have bird flu in poultry can have human cases," Wadia said.
