Center

Woman cured of bird flu

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-03-24 10:37

The fifth person cured of bird flu in China was discharged from hospital on Thursday, local sources said on Friday.

The woman, surnamed Wang, is the only one of the five cured human cases of bird flu in China who used a respirator and underwent a tracheotomy during the treatment.

A 26-year-old villager of Jitai Village of Yingshang County in the eastern province of Anhui, Wang developed fever and pneumonia symptoms on February 11. She tested H5N1 positive at both the national and provincial centers for disease control and was admitted to the No. 2 People's Hospital of Fuyang City on February 18.

"She was suffering from respiratory failure and a lung infection when she was admitted to hospital," said Ge Yang, head of the expert panel which treated the patient. "She is now fully recovered."

Though thinner after over one month of treatment in hospital, Wang looked sanguine and healthy when she left, sources said.

"I feel as good as any healthy person," Wang was quoted as saying.

To date, China has reported 15 human cases of bird flu. Ten of the patients have died and the five others have been cured, according to experts with the Ministry of Health.

Due to the extent of her illness, doctors first used a respirator to help Wang breathe, but after little improvement doctors conducted a tracheotomy and the operation was a success, Ge said.

Wang's recovery provided valuable experience for and increased people's confidence in curing human cases of bird flu, said Cao Zhixin, deputy head of the respiratory disease department of the Beijing-based Chaoyang Hospital.

Cao said that Wang's recovery was only a single case of successful treatment of human cases of bird flu. He warned that a highly effective and low-cost medical treatment system was urgently needed for possible outbreak of human-to-human infection of bird flu.

The Ministry of Health urged the country's health system to continue the prevention and control efforts against bird flu in humans on Monday.

The ministry demanded that health departments should continue leading and guiding the prevention and control of bird flu, strengthen surveillance, staff training and lab testing, and rigidly carry on the reporting and screening of pneumonia cases of unknown causes.

Treatment of human cases of bird flu should be improved and coordination with other departments is needed, according to the ministry.

The ministry has intensified prevention and control efforts against bird flu since last autumn, such as improving emergency response plans, medical staff training and surveillance, and stockpiling materials for possible outbreaks.

This year, China has reported three outbreaks of bird flu among poultry, a sharp decrease compared with 49 outbreaks in the same period of 2004, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

A total of 35 outbreaks of bird flu have been reported in China since 2005, which sickened 194,000 fowl and killed 186,000 of them. About 22.8 million fowl were culled to prevent the disease from spreading. All the outbreaks have been contained, the Ministry of Agriculture claimed.

The central government vowed last year to vaccinate all the country's poultry to curb the disease.

The deadly H5N1 strain has killed about 100 people worldwide since late 2003, according to the World Health Organization. Most victims were infected after close contact with sick birds.

The virus currently can only jump from birds to humans, but scientists fear that it could mutate into a form capable of passing easily among humans and thus spark a global human flu pandemic which might kill millions.