China today confirmed its first two human cases of bird flu as Asia-Pacific leaders called for closer cooperation to avert a pandemic before the winter flu season arrives.
China was racing to vaccinate billions of chickens, ducks and other farm birds in a massive effort to contain the virus.
The Health Ministry reported two confirmed cases in a poultry worker who died in Anhui province in the east and a 9-year-old boy in the central province of Hunan who fell ill but recovered, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The boy's 12-year-old sister, who died, was recorded as a suspected case, it said. China had initially said the two children and a schoolteacher who fell ill at the same time were negative for the H5N1 strain.
But it reopened the investigation and asked the World Health Organisation for help. Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing, said China recorded the girl as a bird flu death but the WHO couldn't reach a conclusion because her body was cremated and couldn't be tested.
He said Chinese investigators decided she may have had the virus based on her shared background with her brother and the circumstances of her illness. There was no official word on the status of the teacher.
Experts are especially worried about the potential for bird flu to spread and mutate in China because of its vast poultry flocks and their close contact with people. It also is a major migration route for wild fowl, which experts say might be spreading the virus.
China has reported 11 outbreaks in chickens and ducks over the past month, prompting authorities to destroy millions of birds in an effort to contain the virus. An outbreak on October 20th in Anhui killed 550 birds.
But Wadia said the 24-year-old poultry worker who died didn't live nearby. He said birds died in her village in what might have been an unreported case. "She apparently had close contact with sick birds," he said. "She died in a hospital. She was therefore tested adequately."
Yesterday, the government announced that it would vaccinate all of China's 14 billion farm birds.
In Liaoning in the north-east, which has suffered four outbreaks, officials already have vaccinated all of the province's 320 million farm birds. The communist government has tried to improve its handling of public health threats since it was criticised in 2003 for its slow response to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.