China has a higher death rate for human infections of bird flu
because of poor medical conditions and delayed treatment in rural
areas, the Ministry of Health said yesterday.
The country has so far confirmed 12 human cases of the H5N1
virus, with eight of them dead. The rate is higher than the global
average, which is less than 50 percent.
The ministry announced the eighth human fatality due to bird
flu. The victim is a 20-year-old female farmer surnamed Long from
Suining County of central China's
Hunan Province. She showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on
January 27 after culling poultry raised in her home, and died on
February 4.
Long's samples tested H5N1 positive by both the Hunan provincial
center for disease control and prevention and the national center,
said the ministry.
"Medical conditions at the grass roots level are poor and
villagers don't know much about the epidemic," the ministry's
spokesperson Mao Qun'an told yesterday's news briefing.
Many patients were sent to hospitals only after they started to
show symptoms of organ failure, which meant they were too late for
treatment.
To address the problem, the ministry will give more support to
local medical workers, and focus on early discovery of the disease,
Mao said.
He asked people to refrain from contact with sick birds or those
that die from unknown causes.
Some human infection cases have been reported in areas with no
evidence of bird flu. Globally, one-third of human infection cases
were reported in areas where no infected birds were discovered, Mao
said.
"Even a small number of sick or dead birds could cause human
infection, though scientists are still not clear how it works," he
added.
Also, because of vaccination against bird flu, only very few
poultry will die of the disease, making it very hard to discover
the epidemic, he said.
In Yangquan, north China's
Shanxi Province, health authorities have put 35 people under
close medical observation after the H5N1 virus killed 15,000 birds
on a farm there.
The 35 workers are confined to their homes and receiving checks
twice a day. About 187,000 poultry were culled in the affected area
to prevent the disease spreading, Xinhua News Agency said
yesterday.
Mao reiterated that there is no proof that the bird flu virus is
transmittable among humans or it has mutated.
He said China is building more community health centers across
the country to provide better and cheaper medical treatment to
urbanites.
Such health centers ensure basic medical service to the
residents, especially the elderly, disabled people and patients
with chronic diseases, Mao said.
So far, China has set up 3,400 community medical service centers
and nearly 12,000 community clinics in most of its cities.
However, the current community health service is still
insufficient to meet people's demand, Mao noted.
The State Council on Wednesday decided to ensure a comprehensive
community health service in all major Chinese cities by 2010. A
work team will be set up by the State Council to lead the reform of
the community health system.
In another development, the ministry said it is still
investigating a scandal involving a hospital in Harbin, capital of
northeast China's
Heilongjiang Province, which charged a patient 5.5 million yuan
(US$680,000) for 67 days of treatment.
The scandal has sparked an outcry for reforming the country's
profit-orientated medical system and scale down the increasingly
high medical bills.
"We will not let the case pass without a result," Mao said.
(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2006)