China confirmed its second human death from bird flu and Vietnam reported an infection in a 15-year-old boy yesterday, as Japan's Health Ministry warned that local governments had stockpiled only a fraction of the antiviral Tamiflu necessary to fight an outbreak in its citizens.
The latest Chinese fatality was a 35-year-old farmer identified only by her surname, Xu, who died on Tuesday after developing a fever and pneumonia-like symptoms following contact with sick and dead poultry, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing the Health Ministry.
The woman, from Xiuning County in the eastern province of Anhui, tested positive for the H5N1 virus, Xinhua said.
PHOTO: AP
The area is about 100km northwest of Zongyang County, where the country's first human bird flu death was reported.
The 24-year-old woman, also a farmer, died on Nov. 10 with the same symptoms as Xu after coming in contact with sick chickens and ducks at home.
China's only other confirmed human bird flu case was a nine-year-old boy in the central province of Hunan, who fell ill but recovered.
In Vietnam, the country hardest-hit by the disease, health authorities said a 15-year-old boy from northern port city of Haiphong was the latest person to test positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
The boy remains hospitalized but was expected to fully recover, said Nguyen Van Binh, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Preventive Medicine Department.
The Tourism Administration of Vietnam also ordered all tour operators not to take foreigners near areas where bird flu outbreaks have been reported, said Vu The Binh, director of the central Tourism Department.
Meanwhile, Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported yesterday that current stockpiles of Tamiflu held by 41 of the country's 47 prefectures were sufficient for approximately 37,400 people -- amounting to just 0.4 percent of what the country's Health Ministry has recommended.
The newspaper report was based on interviews with officials overseeing local anti-bird flu efforts.
The ministry's bird flu action plan unveiled on Nov. 15 calls for prefectures to be able to treat 10.5 million people against the disease.
Five prefectures reported no stockpiles at all, the newspaper said, while a sixth did not make its information public.
Bird flu hit Japan last year for the first time in decades. There has been one confirmed human case, but no reported human deaths.
Also yesterday, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported that China was "within days" of testing a bird flu vaccine on people. There are currently no human vaccines against the disease.
China, which has the world's largest number of chickens, has called bird flu a "serious epidemic." Outbreaks in poultry are still being reported almost daily.
The leadership recently made efforts to be more aggressive and open after being reticent about releasing information during its outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Meanwhile, a UN food agency said on Wednesday it supports China's launching a massive animal vaccination program to combat bird flu, but cautioned that quality control on vaccines made in China must be assured.
Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said agency officials would be among those visiting Chinese laboratories to check that correct procedures were being used to manufacture vaccines.
In other news, hundreds of chickens in Indonesia's tsunami-ravaged Aceh province have died of bird flu, the country's agriculture ministry said yesterday.
Chickens have been infected with the H5N1 strain in at least three districts of the province, said Sjamsul Bahri, the Agriculture Ministry's director of animal health.
"Hundreds of chickens have died," he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
RSS