File photo of a child looking at a chicken in a fowl market in Nanjing, east of China's Jiangsu province.
EyePress News
T
2013-04-01\
Two men in Shanghai were confirmed to have died from a new strain of bird flu, official media reported on Monday, prompting fears that Chinese health authorities were trying to play down a public health threat.
The two men died from the H7N9 avian influenza strain in early March, while a woman in Nanjing remains in critical condition, but Beijing waited nearly three weeks before making an announcement.
One of the men was 87 years old, and died on March 4 after being taken ill on Feb. 19, while the second died on March 10 after becoming ill on Feb. 27, the official China Daily newspaper quoted health officials as saying.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) said it was monitoring the situation.
"There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low," regional agency spokesman Timothy O'Leary told reporters.
Experts are still unsure of how the three people contracted the virus, although officials don't believe they caught it from each other.
An employee who answered the phone at the Shanghai No. 5 People's Hospital declined to comment on the cases, as did an official in the press office of the health and family planning ministry.
"You can keep looking at our official website," she said. "Right now we don't have any relevant information to announce."
'No common source of infection'
Hong Kong's secretary for food and health, Ko Wing Man, said the Special Administrative Region (SAR) government had already been officially informed of the new bird flu cases.
"So far, there is no common source of infection for these three cases," Ko said. "It could be pigs, but it could also be poultry."
"It seems that there wasn't a single source of infection, which is worrying and a cause for concern," he said.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong University infectious disease expert P.L. Ho said it was unusual for a virus without the H5 prefix to infect humans.
"These are special circumstances, in which the virus has not only infected humans, but has resulted in fatalities," Ho said.
"From a virological point of view, there is a possibility that the virus will mutate further," he said.
The news prompted concerns among residents of Shanghai, who are still reeling after tens of thousands of dead pigs were pulled out of a river that supplies their drinking water.
"Now, everyone is joking around that when you go out to eat, you can't eat poultry now, either," said a resident surnamed Yao. "We also had the dead pigs in the Huangpu river, and now they're saying that some of the diseased pigs were used to make steamed rice parcels."
The Hong Kong Oriental Daily News ran an editorial on Monday calling on Chinese health officials to provide people with timely and accurate information on the disease.
"The authorities waited more than 20 days before they announced this," the paper said. "It makes you wonder whether it was because they were holding the parliamentary sessions in Beijing at that time, and they wanted to cover up the truth at that time."
Announcement delayed?
Guangzhou-based rights lawyer Tang Jingling said the authorities had probably delayed the announcement out of concerns over social stability.
"The main reason is the 'stability maintenance' thinking of the authorities," Tang said. "They figure that if they announce it, the job of maintaining social stability will get a lot harder."
"Staying in power matters more to the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party than the safety of its people or their property," he said. "A lot of the information they do put out has been toned down; so they might for example cut the number of people infected and the true geographical extent of the infections."
"I don't think they would be open about these things."
Chinese public health procedures have come under intense scrutiny and suspicion since an official attempt to cover up the extent of the SARS epidemic of 2003 was exposed by a military doctor in Beijing.
The doctor was detained for several months in 2004 at an undisclosed location, while editors at a newspaper in the southern province of Guangdong that broke news about the deadly SARS virus were also harassed and detained. http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/flu-04012013143236.html
The two men died from the H7N9 avian influenza strain in early March, while a woman in Nanjing remains in critical condition, but Beijing waited nearly three weeks before making an announcement.
One of the men was 87 years old, and died on March 4 after being taken ill on Feb. 19, while the second died on March 10 after becoming ill on Feb. 27, the official China Daily newspaper quoted health officials as saying.
The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) said it was monitoring the situation.
"There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low," regional agency spokesman Timothy O'Leary told reporters.
Experts are still unsure of how the three people contracted the virus, although officials don't believe they caught it from each other.
An employee who answered the phone at the Shanghai No. 5 People's Hospital declined to comment on the cases, as did an official in the press office of the health and family planning ministry.
"You can keep looking at our official website," she said. "Right now we don't have any relevant information to announce."
'No common source of infection'
Hong Kong's secretary for food and health, Ko Wing Man, said the Special Administrative Region (SAR) government had already been officially informed of the new bird flu cases.
"So far, there is no common source of infection for these three cases," Ko said. "It could be pigs, but it could also be poultry."
"It seems that there wasn't a single source of infection, which is worrying and a cause for concern," he said.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong University infectious disease expert P.L. Ho said it was unusual for a virus without the H5 prefix to infect humans.
"These are special circumstances, in which the virus has not only infected humans, but has resulted in fatalities," Ho said.
"From a virological point of view, there is a possibility that the virus will mutate further," he said.
The news prompted concerns among residents of Shanghai, who are still reeling after tens of thousands of dead pigs were pulled out of a river that supplies their drinking water.
"Now, everyone is joking around that when you go out to eat, you can't eat poultry now, either," said a resident surnamed Yao. "We also had the dead pigs in the Huangpu river, and now they're saying that some of the diseased pigs were used to make steamed rice parcels."
The Hong Kong Oriental Daily News ran an editorial on Monday calling on Chinese health officials to provide people with timely and accurate information on the disease.
"The authorities waited more than 20 days before they announced this," the paper said. "It makes you wonder whether it was because they were holding the parliamentary sessions in Beijing at that time, and they wanted to cover up the truth at that time."
Announcement delayed?
Guangzhou-based rights lawyer Tang Jingling said the authorities had probably delayed the announcement out of concerns over social stability.
"The main reason is the 'stability maintenance' thinking of the authorities," Tang said. "They figure that if they announce it, the job of maintaining social stability will get a lot harder."
"Staying in power matters more to the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party than the safety of its people or their property," he said. "A lot of the information they do put out has been toned down; so they might for example cut the number of people infected and the true geographical extent of the infections."
"I don't think they would be open about these things."
Chinese public health procedures have come under intense scrutiny and suspicion since an official attempt to cover up the extent of the SARS epidemic of 2003 was exposed by a military doctor in Beijing.
The doctor was detained for several months in 2004 at an undisclosed location, while editors at a newspaper in the southern province of Guangdong that broke news about the deadly SARS virus were also harassed and detained. http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/flu-04012013143236.html
