Chinese Soldier Gets Bird Flu

It is also of paramount importance that bird flu samples are always shared...

The Chinese government media organization has put out a statement saying that a Chinese soldier of the age of nineteen has been put into hospital suffering from bird flu. While it was not actually confirmed that the bird flu he has is the deadly H5N1 flu virus it is expected that following further tests it will be shown to be the case.

The World Health Organisation has had many problems with the reporting of bird flu cases in China. The state run media is extremely secretive and does not like any bad news escaping from China. The official figures say that fifteen persons have died from the bird flu virus in China since the first time it was recorded in 2003. However many analysts are extremely suspicious of these figures and estimate that in the world’s most populous country the real figure for deaths from the bird flu virus are much higher than reported.

The official figures say that the bird flu virus has killed 186 people worldwide since it first broke out and it seems unlikely that with the billions of people living with chickens in China that only fifteen people have succumbed to the disease there. Other countries like Burma which have a state controlled secretive media organisations are also likely to have under reported the bird flu statistics of their countries too.

The World Health Organisation stresses very strongly that it is essential that all information about bird flu cases are shared among all nations so that effective plans can be made to beat the bird flu. It is also of paramount importance that bird flu samples are always shared so that any variation in the development of the virus can be recorded in order for action to be taken especially if it is slowly mutating into a form that could be transmitted between humans.