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BEIJING : China reported on Wednesday its first human case of bird flu in six months, but the farmer who fell ill made a full recovery and the World Health Organisation said there was no cause for alarm.
The 37-year-old man from the eastern province of Anhui showed symptoms of the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu on December 10 and was released from hospital on Saturday, the health ministry said in a statement.
It said the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention only confirmed the man, surnamed Li, had been suffering from bird flu on Monday.
Until Li's case, the most recent report of a person contracting the H5N1 strain in China was on June 19 last year. The victim, a 62-year-old farmer from the northwest region of Xinjiang, died nearly a month later.
The latest case brings to 22 the number of people in China who have contracted the H5N1 strain since it emerged in Asia in late 2003 and spread globally.
Bird flu has killed more than 150 people worldwide since then and there remain fears it may become a far more highly contagious disease that could trigger a deadly, global pandemic.
A 14-year-old boy in Indonesia died of bird flu on Wednesday, the country's first fatality since November and bringing its death toll from the virus to 58, the highest in the world.
But a World Health Organisation spokeswoman said Li contracting the virus should not trigger any heightened concerns.
"One isolated case in six months is certainly not a sign for worry and the threat level to humans remains unchanged," WHO China spokeswoman Joanna Brent said, adding that the H5N1 virus seemed to become more active in winter months.
Brent also praised Chinese health authorities - who in the past have been accused of withholding information about bird flu outbreaks - for proactively dealing with the case and quickly notifying the WHO.
"We're very encouraged by the government's handling of this. They get a gold star," she said.
Authorities closely monitored the patient from the start and ordered an initial batch of bird flu tests in early December, Brent said.
Those tests came back negative, but a second round ordered on the weekend came back positive on Monday and China informed the WHO the next day, she said.
"This is a case of very fast and timely reporting. It shows there is a system in place that is working," Brent said.
The health ministry did not give details as to how Li contracted the virus, but said no signs of bird flu in poultry had been reported in the Tunxi district of Anhui where Li lived.
His relatives and other people in contact with him had not contracted the virus either, the ministry said.
However, Brent said the WHO had been told the man kept some poultry at his home and authorities were examining them.
She cautioned that the lack of a reported poultry outbreak before Li's illness "suggests the need for further strengthening of poultry monitoring".
China conducted a huge campaign last year to contain the disease, aggressively culling tens of thousands of poultry and stepping up public education efforts. - AFP/ls/de
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