Looks as though Chiner is feeling the pressure more and more to be up front with its information regarding the bird flu...
WASHINGTON A Chinese man who died of pneumonia in 2003 and was at first classified as a SARS victim might have died of avian influenza - two years before Beijing reported any human bird flu infections on the mainland to the World Health Organization, Chinese researchers reported.
The case of the death in Beijing raises the possibility that others attributed to SARS may have actually been caused by the deadly H5N1 flu.
But in a confusing development, at least one of the researchers asked Wednesday that the letter reporting the case be withdrawn from publication in The New England Journal of Medicine. Editors of the medical journal said they were trying to find out why.
The letter was available to journalists before its withdrawal, and it describes the case of a 24-year-old man who died of pneumonia and respiratory distress in November 2003
We lived here in 1997 when the first out break of bird flu happened. Most reports have the flu centered in Hong Kong...but, as everyone knows around here, there are very few chickens raised for food in Hong Kong...most come from the mainland. The news at that time was dismal. The only information we gained at that time was through HK media and most of it was centered around a panic type mode.
So now, China is being requested for all information...
China was criticized by the United Nations health agency for its slow response to a 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. World health authorities are tracking cases of the H5N1 avian flu strain, which has infected at least 228 people in 10 countries since late 2003, killing 130 of them, the WHO said on June 20.
International health agencies are trying to work more closely with China to detect and prevent infectious diseases faster, particularly in the densely populated southern region. Human H5N1 cases provide opportunity for the virus to mutate into a pandemic form that may kill millions of people.
It seems as though Chiner is a little more forthcoming with its information. In the past, this was all about face and Chiner being able to deal with its 'internal' issues on its own. More and more, it seems as though they are beginning to realize that the bird flu issue is not an internal one...but a global one. Let's hope...
Reminds me of the Soviets slow realization of the disaster created by Chernolbyl and they finally relented to tell the world about the problem.
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