UN Wants Details as China Claims No Human Flu Cases

BEIJING – China and Thailand said on Friday suspected human cases of bird flu were false alarms but the U.N.'s health agency said it had no details on the Chinese case and wanted more information.

Since last week China has revealed three outbreaks of the H5N1 virus that killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese.

A 12-year-old girl died on Oct. 17 near the site of the latest reported outbreak in the southern province of Hunan but a Health Ministry official said this was due to pneumonia.

Official Chen Xianyi told reporters the girl's 9-year-old brother had also contracted pneumonia and was in stable condition. "There have been no cases of human infection of H5N1," Chen said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was seeking information from Chinese authorities.

"We still have no information on suspect cases in China," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng told Reuters in Geneva.

Some Chinese media reports have said the girl's body was cremated and it was unclear what samples were taken, she said.

"We need more clarification because both apparently had been exposed to sick chickens," Cheng said.

China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak first surfaced in Asia in late 2003. Since then, 62 people have died in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia and the virus has spread to Europe's eastern border.

Farmers in China, like many parts of Asia, live alongside their poultry and other livestock, increasing the chances of the disease spreading to humans, experts say. It also raises the chance of the virus mutating into a form that could spread easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die.

The Health Ministry's Chen said China's first priority was controlling outbreaks among poultry.

"If we fail to do that, sooner or later the disease will be transmitted from birds to humans," he said.

"Grave Threat"

Experts suspect that migratory birds are helping spread H5N1 because they act as hosts for the virus.

"The movement of migratory birds is a grave threat to our country's efforts at prevention and control," Jia Youling, chief veterinary officer and director-general of the Veterinary Bureau at the Agriculture Ministry, said on Friday.

"During their movement, they have frequent contact with domestic poultry and could infect them."

China, the most populous nation, has 29 percent of the world's poultry. Most human bird flu infections are due to handling birds sick with the virus or contact with their droppings.

"It's not realistic for our country to completely halt outbreaks of avian influenza," Jia added.

Thailand said three French tourists suspected of catching bird flu during a visit to a bird park there had tested negative for H5N1.

"The final lab results have confirmed that they had human flu of the H3N2 type," Thawat Suntarjarn, head of the Department of Disease Control, said in a statement.

H3N2 is the same strain that triggered the world's last influenza pandemic in 1968, so-called Hong Kong flu.

The strain is no longer the danger it once was because most people have long since developed immunity and annual flu vaccinations protect against it.

As nations refine action plans, many are stockpiling scarce anti-viral drugs, or taking matters into their own hands.

Taiwan plans to make its own version of Tamiflu for 200,000 people in December even if it is not given permission by the Swiss drug maker Roche AG, an official said on Friday.

The step comes a day after Roche said it was halting retail shipments of Tamiflu to the United States and Canada to head off hoarding by consumers. Vietnam said on Thursday it would start making Tamiflu if faced with a pandemic.

Australia updated bird flu warnings for expatriates and travellers in Asian countries on Friday, urging them to have their own supply of anti-viral drugs and to prepare an evacuation plan in the event of an outbreak.

Sri Lanka joined a list of countries temporarily halting all poultry imports.

"In effect it is a ban, but we are assessing it every day. It is difficult for us to discriminate (between affected and unaffected countries)," said S.K.R. Amarasekara at the Livestock Ministry.

Reporting by Nopporn Wong-Anan in Bangkok, Simon Gardner in Colombo, Alice Hung in Taipei and James Grubel in Canberra