From today’s New Scientist, some unsurprisingly harrowing news about avian influenza developments in China being suppressed:
Expert says bird flu has killed 300 people in China
18:27 24 November 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzieA respected Japanese scientist, who works with the World Health Organization, says 300 people have died of H5N1 bird flu in China, including seven cases caused by human-to-human transmission.
He says he was given the information in confidence by Chinese colleagues who have been threatened with arrest if they disclosed the extent of the problem.
The allegations, which he revealed at a meeting in Germany, contrast sharply with China’s official position. It reports three confirmed cases of H5N1 in people: a boy in Hunan province who recovered, and two women who died in Anhui province, the latest of which was announced on Thursday. There may be another probable case in Hunan.
But Masato Tashiro, head of virology at Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Disease – a WHO-collaborating centre for bird flu – told the meeting of virologists in Marburg, Germany, on 19 November that “we have been systematically deceived”. His comments were reported in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
He told the stunned meeting, called to mark the retirement of a senior German virologist, that there have been “several dozen” outbreaks in people, 300 confirmed deaths and 3000 people placed in isolation with suspected cases.
Tashiro could not be reached for comment today.
Granted, we’re still only talking about seven human-to-human cases of transmission, so alarmism is unwarranted, but 300 is still very different from China’s official count of three cases, with two deaths.
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