China calls for bird flu information to be pooled

China urged other governments today to share more information about bird flu cases in people to prevent a human pandemic.

An official report said many residents in China’s vast hinterland are uninformed about the disease.

Few developing countries other than China have submitted bird flu samples from humans to international organisations, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.

An official was quoted as saying: “The international community should further improve the information-sharing mechanism for the disease.”

The report came as health experts were attending a World Health Organization (WHO) conference in Geneva that is meant to produce guidelines for public health officials to stop a possible human pandemic in its early stages.

The WHO’s Asia-Pacific regional director, Dr Shigeru Omi, criticised China’s Agriculture Ministry in December for refusing to share samples from animal outbreaks. The ministry did not respond.

China could reap an economic windfall if it creates an effective bird flu vaccine or treatment before foreign competitors that might be helped by access to its virus samples.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency quoted pandemic control expert Zhong Nanshan yesterday as saying bird flu has not been sufficiently publicised, especially in some rural areas.

“Some people there (in the countryside) are not alert for bird flu,” said Zhong, who is also a delegate to the panel that advises the country’s parliament.

“They don’t report serious pneumonia cases to the relevant departments,” he said.

Bird flu victims have often developed pneumonia.

Zhong said people should realise that other animals, such as cats and pigs, may carry the virus.

The WHO says 175 human cases of bird flu have been reported worldwide, 95 of them fatal, since the latest wave of outbreaks began in 2003.

The disease has ravaged poultry flocks around the world.

China reported its ninth bird flu death this week out of 15 confirmed human cases.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds, but experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus could mutate into a strain easily passed between humans, triggering a deadly global pandemic.