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16-year-old loses fight with bird flu infection

By Lan Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-21 07:45

A 16-year-old student died of bird flu in Hunan province yesterday morning, the third fatality in China this year, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The boy, surnamed Wu, was a native of Guizhou province. After developing a fever at home on Jan 8, he was admitted to hospital in Huaihua, Hunan, on Friday, but doctors were unable to save him, the report said.

"The epidemiological investigation found that before falling ill, the boy had been in contact with poultry that had died of the sickness," Xinhua quoted a notice from the Hunan health bureau as saying.

Four people have been confirmed as becoming infected with bird flu in the past two weeks, three of whom have died.

Since the reemergence of the flu in China in 2003, 34 people have been infected and 23 have died.

The two other recent victims were 19-year-old Beijing woman Huang Yanqing who died on Jan 5, and a 27-year-old woman surnamed Zhang who died in Shandong province on Saturday.

A 2-year-old girl surnamed Peng from Shanxi province, has been confirmed as being infected with the H5N1 virus and is in a critical but stable condition, China Business News reported.

The report said the girl's mother died early last month after exhibiting symptoms similar to bird flu, but there has been no official confirmation of the cause of her death.

Also yesterday, the Ministry of Health urged health authorities nationwide via a videoconference to strengthen efforts to control and prevent the disease.

Health minister Chen Zhu said the situation is "very serious" as the disease is in its high incidence season.

"Health departments should improve their diagnosis and treatment skills, and ensure infected people are isolated and cured as early as possible," he said.

Health departments should also enhance surveillance and report immediately if they find evidence of people being infected, he said.

"Health departments should communicate and cooperate with agricultural, and industry and commerce departments, and promote research on the disease," he said.

The ministries of health and agriculture, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce will step up supervision of live poultry markets to control the disease, he said.

Meanwhile, sales at poultry markets have been falling on news of the latest deaths.

Wang Yongmei, an official at Beijing's largest poultry market, the Yuegezhuang agricultural fair, said: "The fair is currently selling 6 tons of poultry a day, compared with 7 tons a day before the woman died of bird flu in Beijing on Jan 5."

"But we believe sales will increase as Spring Festival approaches," she said.

An official at the Dezhengyuan agricultural marketplace in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, said poultry sales were down 50 percent.

(China Daily 01/21/2009 page4)