China confirms having first human case of bird flu in 2003

BEIJING: China acknowledged on Tuesday that the country's first human infection of H5N1 bird flu occurred in 2003, two years earlier than previously thought, confirming that the communist giant had the world's first case of the deadly disease in the current virus cycle.

The Chinese Ministry of Health said the country's first human case of H5N1 bird flu occurred two years earlier than previously thought, in November 2003. The disease has so far killed 135 people worldwide, at least 12 in China.

A letter published by eight Chinese scientists on June 22 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine said that the bird flu virus had been found in a 24-year-old man who died in Beijing in 2003.

The man, surnamed Shi, became ill with pneumonia and respiratory disease in November 2003 and died four days after being hospitalised. China was then in the aftermath of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and the case was initially thought to be a SARS case.

However, lab tests for SARS proved negative.

Parallel laboratory tests, carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO), later confirmed that it was a human case of bird flu.

"This is the first human case confirmed on the Chinese mainland and the first human infection confirmed in the world in the current H5N1 virus cycle," WHO Beijing office spokesman Roy Wadia said.