Can China cope with bird flu?
By Stephen Cviic BBC News China has announced its first human death from bird flu, raising renewed fears about the possible spread of the disease among birds and humans. Up until now, all of the human fatalities from the H5N1 strain have been in East Asia, most of them in Vietnam and Thailand. But when the disease affects people in China, the world’s most populous country, it is bound to attract even more attention. The woman who is known to have died of it was a poultry worker in the eastern province of Anhui. The other confirmed case was a boy in Hunan province who has since recovered; his sister died, but because she was cremated immediately afterwards, it is impossible to know what the cause of death was. “The virus is entrenched… we expect more outbreaks” Henk Bedekam World Health Organization China has been grappling with eleven separate outbreaks of bird flu, also known as avian influenza, among fowl, and some human cases were expected. Henk Bedekam, the World Health Organizat
