Whistle blown as bird flu toll rises

Candy Chan
Wednesday, April 03, 2013

The mainland has been hit by four more cases of a new strain of bird flu, bringing total infections to seven.
They came as a Weibo user blew the whistle on Nanjing's Gulou Hospital when he posted a photo of what appears to be a diagnosis of a patient, one of the four new cases.
The profile of user "Phoenix" says he is an administrative director at the hospital.
And in Hong Kong, Health Secretary Ko Wing-man said the government will step up temperature checks at the border, especially for people from Shanghai and Anhui province. Ko said private clinics have been alerted to keep the Department of Health informed of suspected cases.
The health bureau in Jiangsu said yesterday three women and one man have caught H7N9 avian flu. It follows Sunday's disclosure of three infections - two of them fatal - elsewhere in China, the first time the strain is known to have been passed to humans.
There is no evidence yet to link the Jiangsu four, who lived in different cities, the health bureau said.
One of the patients, from Nanjing city, worked slaughtering live poultry, but the others had no such contact. The 45-year-old butcher, a Nanjing woman named Xu, went down with a fever and cough on March 19.
Her condition worsened on March 24 when she was put in intensive care. On March 30, doctors confirmed she had H7N9 and she was quarantined.
Her case was revealed after Weibo user Phoenix revealed details.
The original Weibo post has been withdrawn, but the image has been copied and circulated by other Weibo users as well as reported by mainland media, include state-run CCTV.
Another woman, from Suqian, surnamed Sang, 48, is a sheet metal worker. She was diagnosed with H7N9 last Saturday and is in intensive care.
A third, surnamed Shen, an 83-year- old Suzhou man, fell ill with fever, cough and chest pain on March 20.
The fourth - Zhang, a 32-year-old woman from Wuxi - came down with fever and cough on March 21.
No further cases have been identified among 206 contacts in follow-up checks.
Earlier confirmed cases are an 87-year-old man who died in Shanghai on March 4 and a 35-year-old woman in Chuzhou, Anhui province, who fell ill on March 9 after coming into contact with poultry.
Shanghai's health bureau has clarified that the two sons of the 87-year- old did not test positive for H7N9.
Hong Kong's health chief said yesterday that an emergency meeting involving the Hospital Authority, the Centre for Health Protection and other departments was held to assess the risk from the new strain.
Ko said the situation is worrying because the fatality rate of the H7N9 virus is high.
He is concerned about it jumping between animal species.
The World Health Organization yesterday played down fears over the new type of bird flu, but said it is crucial to find out how the virus infected humans.
Meanwhile, the father-in-law of a 27-year-old Shanghai butcher, surnamed Wu, who died of H7N9 flu claimed Wu was infected in the No 5 People's Hospital in Minhang district. He said the hospital paid 130,000 yuan (HK$162,700) compensation.
But a doctor in charge of Wu's treatment denied the case involved human- to-human transmission of the virus. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=11&art_id=132556&sid=39377272&con_type=1&d_str=20130403&fc=2