A team of experts from Hong Kong and Macao visited Guangzhou yesterday to meet with officials over the latest human bird flu fatality.

The closed-door meeting was expected to help authorities in the two special administrative regions gain a better understanding of the disease.

Following Guangzhou's first-ever fatal case of avian flu, many poultry markets in the city have suffered from a plummeting demand in live chickens. Some have reported a 90 per cent drop in sales.

"I only sold four chickens this morning, whereas previously I was selling 30 chickens a day," Liang Wei, a market trader in Guangzhou, said yesterday.

A woman, surnamed Huang, said her family were eating chicken as usual. "It is safe as long as I cook it for longer," she said.

"The odd case does not mean Guangzhou has an outbreak of bird flu," said Luo Huiming, a chief doctor of Guangdong Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday.

Bird flu often occurs between the December to March period, he added.

The Chinese Ministry of Health confirmed on Sunday that a man in south China's Guangdong Province died of bird flu.

The victim, Lao Qiliang, 32, was an unemployed resident in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong.

The provincial health department said he frequented markets where poultry was slaughtered before sale. It is believed that this was the cause of his infection.

He developed symptoms of fever and pneumonia on February 22 and died last Thursday.

The following day, his blood samples were tested H5N1 positive by Guangdong CDC.

The national CDC then tested the sample again, and the Ministry of Health confirmed bird flu as the cause of death on Sunday.

Guangdong health authorities immediately put those who had close contact with Lao before he died under medical observation. No one is reported to be sick, including his girlfriend.

Hong Kong stopped live poultry imports from Guangdong yesterday. The ban will last for three weeks at least. Macao has not followed suit.

Guangzhou Municipal Health Bureau activated its emergency medical response scheme on Friday after the death, but did not designate it as the most seriously graded incident.

"The virus of bird flu has not spread among human beings so far, therefore we did not activate a higher grade scheme," Huang Sui, an official of the bureau said yesterday.

According to the response scheme, all suspected bird flu patients should be sent to designated hospitals, and all hospitals should report any suspected cases of the disease to medical authorities.

Investigations are then carried out to trace the source of the disease. The city has also implemented a seven-day medical observation on people who have had close contact with poultry that have died of disease since last Friday.

The total number of human cases of bird flu in the Chinese mainland now stands at 15.

Nine people have died, two are still under treatment and the others have been discharged from hospital.

(China Daily March 7, 2006)