WHO confirms human cases of bird flu, including fatality

The three cases were the first for mainland China.
BEIJING (AP) -- China reported its first human cases of bird flu on the mainland Wednesday, including at least one fatality, as health workers armed with vaccine and disinfectant raced to inoculate billions of chickens and other poultry in a massive campaign to contain the virus.
The World Health Organization confirmed the virulent strain experts fear could cause a worldwide flu pandemic has now infected humans in the world's most populous nation.
China's Health Ministry reported confirmed cases of infection with the deadly H5N1 strain in a poultry worker, who died, and a 9-year-old boy, who fell ill in central Hunan province but recovered, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said the boy's 12-year-old sister, who died, was recorded as a suspected case.
Experts worry the virus could spread and mutate in China because of its huge poultry flocks and their contact with humans. It also has migration routes for geese and other wild birds that might carry the disease.
"This is a psychologically telling moment for a country that has never had bird flu cases in the past in humans," said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing. "This will drive home to citizens across the country that this can happen in our own back yards," he said. "It's a very real threat."
Not unexpected
Officials had warned a human infection in China was inevitable after the country suffered 11 outbreaks in poultry over the past month, which prompted authorities to destroy millions of birds.
Elsewhere in Asia, the H5N1 strain has infected at least 126 people and killed at least 64 of them since 2003, two-thirds of them in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in Geneva said the Chinese cases do not increase the risk of a flu pandemic because there has been no observed genetic change in the virus and no apparent spread between people.
She said it would not be surprising if more human bird flu cases are confirmed in China. "There are a lot of chickens infected and there's a lot of contact between humans and chickens in China," she said.
The Chinese government announced plans Tuesday to vaccinate all the country's 14 billion domestic fowl.
It wasn't clear how long that would take. According to Chinese health officials, vaccinating chickens can require repeated injections and booster shots. State television showed workers at industrial-scale poultry farms jabbing chickens with injector guns.
Health experts in Geneva said shots were the most reliable way to deliver vaccine, although it can also be administered by mixing it in the animals' feed.
Program completed
Officials in Liaoning in China's northeast, scene of four outbreaks, said they have finished a vaccination program begun this month for the province's 320 million birds.
Such vaccination programs are "the right thing to do," said David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator for bird and human flu. The virus is so entrenched in China's birds that simply slaughtering them will not work, he said. The best plan is to vaccinate and then slaughter when there are outbreaks, he said at a conference on bird flu in New York.
China's prompt response to bird flu and the scale of its anti-disease effort have been in striking contrast to its handling of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, when it was criticized for its secrecy and failure to respond to foreign pleas for information and cooperation.
Since the SARS outbreak, the government has set up disease testing laboratories and a health warning network. It has promised to be more open about epidemics and to cooperate with other nations.
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