NYT: Experts Doubt (human) Bird Flu Tallies From China and Elsewhere

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Experts Doubt Bird Flu Tallies From China and Elsewhere
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 2, 2005


ROME, Nov. 30 - With China reporting its first two human deaths from bird flu, international health specialists are warning that current tallies may greatly underestimate the problem, there and elsewhere.

Scientists have long been mystified by the low number of cases in humans reported in China, which has such a severe bird flu problem that it recently announced plans to vaccinate 14.2 billion chickens, geese and ducks. Far smaller countries, with less severe bird flu outbreaks, have reported many more human cases.

A team from the World Health Organization has gone to China to help investigate the deaths of two women in eastern Anhui Province, a 24-year-old poultry worker on Nov. 10 and a 35-year-old farmer on Nov. 22.

Dick Thompson, a W.H.O. spokesman in Geneva, said last week that the health agency did not believe that China was hiding human bird flu cases the way it covered up the number of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003. But he said systems to diagnose a viruslike bird ailment were often poorly developed and underfinanced in the rural areas with the most cases....

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Vietnam has reported 91 cases of bird flu in humans, with 41 deaths, said Cao Duc Phat, the minister of agriculture, who presented new data last week to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. China, which has reported 24 outbreaks this year, has reported only three cases of infection in humans....(W)hile Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand have provided international specialists with samples of viruses from each bird flu outbreak, China has not shared such material....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/international/europe/02bird.html