China has a higher death rate for human infections of bird flu because of poor medical conditions and delayed treatment in rural areas, the Ministry of Health said yesterday.

 

The country has so far confirmed 12 human cases of the H5N1 virus, with eight of them dead. The rate is higher than the global average, which is less than 50 percent.

 

The ministry announced the eighth human fatality due to bird flu. The victim is a 20-year-old female farmer surnamed Long from Suining County of central China's Hunan Province. She showed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on January 27 after culling poultry raised in her home, and died on February 4.

 

Long's samples tested H5N1 positive by both the Hunan provincial center for disease control and prevention and the national center, said the ministry.

 

"Medical conditions at the grass roots level are poor and villagers don't know much about the epidemic," the ministry's spokesperson Mao Qun'an told yesterday's news briefing.

 

Many patients were sent to hospitals only after they started to show symptoms of organ failure, which meant they were too late for treatment.

 

To address the problem, the ministry will give more support to local medical workers, and focus on early discovery of the disease, Mao said.

 

He asked people to refrain from contact with sick birds or those that die from unknown causes.

 

Some human infection cases have been reported in areas with no evidence of bird flu. Globally, one-third of human infection cases were reported in areas where no infected birds were discovered, Mao said.

 

"Even a small number of sick or dead birds could cause human infection, though scientists are still not clear how it works," he added.

 

Also, because of vaccination against bird flu, only very few poultry will die of the disease, making it very hard to discover the epidemic, he said.

 

In Yangquan, north China's Shanxi Province, health authorities have put 35 people under close medical observation after the H5N1 virus killed 15,000 birds on a farm there.

 

The 35 workers are confined to their homes and receiving checks twice a day. About 187,000 poultry were culled in the affected area to prevent the disease spreading, Xinhua News Agency said yesterday.

 

Mao reiterated that there is no proof that the bird flu virus is transmittable among humans or it has mutated.

 

He said China is building more community health centers across the country to provide better and cheaper medical treatment to urbanites.

 

Such health centers ensure basic medical service to the residents, especially the elderly, disabled people and patients with chronic diseases, Mao said.

 

So far, China has set up 3,400 community medical service centers and nearly 12,000 community clinics in most of its cities.

 

However, the current community health service is still insufficient to meet people's demand, Mao noted.

 

The State Council on Wednesday decided to ensure a comprehensive community health service in all major Chinese cities by 2010. A work team will be set up by the State Council to lead the reform of the community health system.

 

In another development, the ministry said it is still investigating a scandal involving a hospital in Harbin, capital of northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which charged a patient 5.5 million yuan (US$680,000) for 67 days of treatment.

 

The scandal has sparked an outcry for reforming the country's profit-orientated medical system and scale down the increasingly high medical bills.

 

"We will not let the case pass without a result," Mao said.

 

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency February 11, 2006)