Flu in the news
Influenza World brings you the latest news and updates in the flu field from around the world.
10 February 2009
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Health Ministry is puzzled by eight human cases of bird flu in January which appeared independent of any known case in birds, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Five Chinese died from H5N1 in January in far-flung regions without any reported presence of the virus in birds on the mainland.
Dead birds that washed up in Hong Kong tested positive for the H5N1 strain this month, leading experts to question whether bird flu is widely present but undetected in China.
"We see the result, but not the cause. We don't know where it has come from, but people have been infected. When people are infected, in theory it should be present in birds," spokesman Mao Qunan told reporters.
Later on Tuesday, the Ministry of Agriculture said there had been an H5N1 outbreak among poultry in Hotan, in the far western region of Xinjiang, which had killed 519 birds.
Authorities have culled another 13,218 birds and the outbreak is under control, the official Xinhua news agency said.
China has reported one case of bird flu detected through sampling this winter, in eastern Jiangsu province. China conducts random sampling and culls birds when the virus is found.
Last week, the Agriculture Ministry defended its vaccination campaign as having successfully prevented widespread incidence of bird flu.
The Ministry of Health has also urged hospitals to increase efforts at early detection and testing for bird flu, Mao said.
Some people may be genetically more susceptible to bird flu than others, he added.
The mother of one of this year's victims, a toddler who has recovered, died of pneumonia shortly before her daughter took ill. But the woman was never tested for bird flu.
While H5N1 rarely infects people, experts fear it could mutate into a form people could easily pass to one another, sparking a pandemic.
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- "I would describe flu as something that makes you feel very, very ill. You get a headache, aching bones, and are generally fed up"
- "When I get flu symptoms I feel like a train has run over me"
- "I felt very sick and, during the first week, I had high temperature. Flu was very different to a cold. I went back to work after two and a half weeks. Then I suffered a setback for another week"
- "I run a guesthouse; flu would be a real pest for me. I couldn’t cook, I shouldn’t cook, and I wouldn’t cook, so I would need to get a lot of extra help in. It would cost me a lot more money. So flu’s a real problem, a right downturn"
- "I work on my own and when I can’t work, I have to try not to infect my little children, so they avoid getting the flu as well"
- "I feel a little numb, like I’m in another dimension. Because in general I have sore throat, headache, I feel all clogged-up. Usually a sensation like I’m floating in the air"
- "Shivers, sweats, makes you ache. Last time I had flu I was off for two weeks"
- "I think that I would probably be concerned that I would pass flu onto my children, who might not be able to deal with it as well as I would"
- "Flu makes you feel like you’ve been hit over the head with a baseball bat. You don’t feel like you can get yourself out of bed as all your energy is drawn from you"
- "I was incapable of working. It just wasn’t possible at all… and my flu dragged on for more than a week"
- "I have no strength. It annoys me because I can do nothing, it seems like I’m wasting my time"
- "Flu’s like being hit by a truck because you feel completely gone. There is no energy left in your body. You are suffering from high temperature. You’re sweating a lot and you feel really unwell"
- "First of all infinite tiredness, then I feel like sleeping and don’t want to eat"
- "I felt really miserable because my muscles and my bones were aching. Well, I can hardly describe it, I just felt really awful, absolutely miserable"
- "It’s like there’s something huge treading on your head, like a deafening noise that destroys the eardrums"
- "The fever was constantly rising – I immediately measured my temperature as soon as I got home. It was 41°C and it kept rising and I was wondering what’s going on. I was really scared! Everything was hurting and it all happened so fast. Flu came out of the blue"
- "I always feel like my limbs have iron weights tied to them and I’m going to fall over any minute, a really stuffy runny nose and feel antisocial"
- "I was totally dependent on others! I was incapable of doing anything at all"
- "The real flu knocks you for six – you just don’t want to move or do anything. It’s not very nice"
- "Not being able to go to work. Not being able to do the things I have to do at home and the commitments that I have day by day"