Chinese Regime Admits First Bird Flu Death Was in 2003

Chinese Regime Admits First Bird Flu Death Was in 2003
Chinese Health Minister Gao Qiang (Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images)
8/11/2006
Updated:
8/11/2006

CHINA–On August 8, the Chinese communist regime’s Ministry of Health (MOH) announced that the death of a serviceman in November 2003 has been confirmed as an isolated case of highly pathogenic bird flu (H5N1). This is the earliest known death resulting from human bird flu infection in China, coming two years prior to the previous earliest known case.

The investigation of this bird flu victim who died three years ago was prompted by a report published by Chinese researchers in June of this year, which indicated that individual human bird flu deaths appeared in China as early as 2003 during the SARS outbreak period.

The victim in this case was a 24-year-old sergeant. In 2003, he displayed symptoms of fever and lung infection and went to a military hospital in Beijing for treatment. He died on November 25 of that same year. The hospital’s diagnosis for the cause of death was SARS. Last month MOH re-examined specimens of the dead man’s lungs, blood and tissue using laboratory tests. As a result, the hospital announced that it was the first death from highly pathogenic human bird flu in Mainland China.

As to whether the Communist regime has been concealing the bird flu epidemic situation in China, the World Health Organization did not wish to comment. However, the WHO’s Beijing spokesperson indicated that they will not exclude the possibility that there are other concealed cases, and urged the Chinese MOH to reinvestigate any instances of unknown lung infection.

The new investigation began on June 22 this year when the New England Journal of Medicine published a report by the Chinese researchers who had reviewed a case of fever and lung infection that occurred at the end of November 2003, with unknown causes, and that it might be a case of bird flu. The report also pointed out that no SARS virus had ever been found in the body of this man although his cause of death was diagnosed as SARS, yet they found bird flu virus in the lung tissue specimen of the dead man.

Because the Communist regime took until May 2005 to notify WHO of the first human bird flu infection case in China, the report pushed back the occurrence of the first case in China by two years. WHO requested Beijing to verify and clarify.

Compelled by external pressure, China’s MOH organized the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and China’s Academy of Military Medical Science along with WHO’s experts to cooperate and finally diagnosed the patient as a human bird flu infection case.

According to the BBC, one author who participated in this research report wrote a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine on June 21 and requested a withdrawal of this report without explanation. Using the excuse that the report had already been printed, the magazine rejected the request.