A nine-year-old girl has died of bird flu in China, the state media said yesterday as the World Health Organisation (Who) said action was needed now to prepare for an influenza pandemic.
The girl, China's 10th known death from bird flu, died on Monday night in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the official Xinhua news agency said.
A Belgian man who returned from China on March 5th has been admitted to hospital there with the symptoms of bird flu.
The Belgian Food Agency said it has begun tests to see if the patient, now in quarantine, has contracted the H5N1 virus but said it was unlikely to be the case.
It said the Saint-Pierre hospital, south of the capital, had contacted health inspectors after admitting the patient, who has not been identified. The Who, confirming the Chinese girl's death, said bird flu has infected 175 people, killing 96 of them since 2003.
"We have a time lapse before it becomes a human disease and we have to use this time for developing a plan for working on vaccines, stockpiling medicines and for educating people," Who director general Lee Jong-wook said on a visit to east Africa.
The virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, killing birds in more than 15 new countries as it moves deeper into Europe and Africa.
Albania became the latest European country to report the flu. The virus was detected in a chicken in the southern Sarande coastal region, close to the border with Greece.
Indian health officials said they had contained an outbreak in poultry, but the virus was still present in bird waste two weeks after the first cases were reported.
The Who said Africa would get a "sizeable portion" of the $2 billion (€1.68 billion) which rich nations have pledged to fight the disease.
The H5N1 influenza virus was detected in domestic flocks in Egypt, Nigeria and Niger last month.
As the crisis deepens and more countries are finding the disease, the US and EU have backed the formation of a what a senior US official called an "emergency operations centre" at the Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Rome headquarters.
The initiative was agreed at a meeting at the FAO requested by the US and EU earlier this week.
The FAO "early warning system", will track the spread of the virus and estimate where the next outbreaks may occur, said Samuel Jutzi, head of animal production and health at the FAO.
"It would undertake 'rumour tracking' and would be similar to what the World Health Organisation has to observe and monitor developments of epidemics 24 hours-a-day," Mr Jutzi said.