WHO: China's bird flu cases don't signal pandemic

Feb 18, 3:14 AM EST By TINI TRAN Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) -- China's eight bird flu cases last month do not constitute an immediate public health problem, U.N. health officials said Wednesday, but the country needs to step up its vigilance to combat the disease. Hans Troedsson, head of the World Health Organization in China, said the H5N1 flu infections, which included five deaths, have followed a historic pattern of increasing during the cold season. About 83 percent of China's 38 total cases since 2003 were reported from November to March, he said. "Why we don't suspect this is the beginning of a pandemic is that you have these cases geographically distributed and there are no links between them," he said in Beijing. "All of them have been exposed to sick or dead poultry or wet markets, so there is a plausible explanation on how they can be transmitted." He added there was no indication of human-to-human transmission. Scientists have long feared that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has devastated poultry stock across Asia, could mutate and become highly infectious among people, triggering a deadly global pandemic. Still, the cases in China have raised concerns because there were no large outbreaks of the flu among poultry in areas where humans fell ill, Troedsson said. "It is of great concern for us. It's something we are raising, both with WHO and FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization), with the government," Troedsson said. China has taken steps to control and monitor its poultry population in the last four years, said Vincent Martin of the Rome-based FAO, but there remain big "gaps" in its ability to monitor its poultry, he said. "Definitely the Ministry of Agriculture is aware of this problem. They are taking millions of samples to check on the status of the poultry population but it's a huge task and a huge challenge for them," he said. In addition, China's centuries-old method of "backyard farming," with small farmers living amid and raising livestock together creates immense obstacles to wiping out the bird flu virus completely, he said. Worldwide, avian influenza has spread across 15 countries, with 407 human cases reported, 254 of them fatal.

So which is it Hans?..Posing a pandemic risk no one can escape, or just run of the mill annual infections? If the recent cases dont represent anything, why are you concerned about the lack of poultry outbreaks in the same areas?..