The farmer from east China's Anhui Province, who contracted the deadly H5N1
strain of bird flu last December but was later cured of the
disease, has donated his serum for treatment of a rural Chinese
woman who was confirmed last month to be infected with the same
virus.
Xu Longshan, spokesman and chief of the Fujian Provincial
Professional Panel for Prevention and Control of Human Infection of
Bird Flu said the female patient had developed rapidly progressing
pneumonia and went into a coma.
He said health workers from Anhui Province on Thursday escorted
the farmer, identified by his surname as Li, to Fuzhou, capital of
Fujian Province, where experts from the blood
center affiliated with the Fujian Provincial Bureau of Health got
serum from him the second day.
Li has since returned home.
"The serum was brought to Jian'ou on the same day, and so far,
medical workers have carried out the first round of injection on
the woman who was just confirmed of being infected of the lethal
strain of the avian disease," said Xu.
"The method is new but certainly will be of some benefit in
improving the woman's capability of fighting against new rounds of
infection," said Xu, who admitted it would be some time before the
woman could develop her own immunity against the disease.
Li, 44, is a native of Damiao Village, a marketplace in the
mountainous Town of Xiaosong. The woman, who kept five chickens at
her home, developed symptoms including fever on February 18. She
had visited village clinics and town hospitals before being
hospitalized on February 24 in the Jian'ou City Hospital.
She ate two chickens she had raised, but her husband and son,
who also ate the chickens, have not developed bird flu.
(Xinhua News Agency March 5, 2007)