| ■ China Confirms Human Bird Flu Death in 2003 | 06.08.10 |
| The first laboratory-confirmed bird flu death in China occurred in November 2003 rather than the previously reported date of October 2005, the country's top health officials said Tuesday. This means that China had the first human case in the current H5N1 bird flu outbreak. The new information indicates that China needs to improve its bird flu surveillance and reporting systems, experts said. The 2003 case involved a 24-year-old Beijing man who died during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The man was diagnosed with serious pneumonia without a clear cause. After he died, tests showed that SARS was not the cause. Because of that, experts kept the man's sample for further research. That sample contained H5N1, China Daily reported. The source of the bird flu infection in the man is not known, officials said. There were no reported outbreaks of H5N1 in the Beijing area at the time. China reported its first bird flu outbreak in poultry in late January 2004. To date, the country has reported 20 human infections and 13 deaths, including the November 2003 case, China Daily reported. |