Sichuan woman dies of bird flu
26/1/2006 8:32
Ji Mi / Shanghai Daily news
A Sichuan Province
woman, the country's 10th human case of avian flu, has died, bringing the human
fatality toll to seven, the Ministry of Health said yesterday.
The ministry
did not say when she died.
The ministry announced the case, a 29-year-old
woman identified as Cao, on Monday.
The woman operated a store at an
agricultural commodities market in Jinhua Town of the provincial capital
Chengdu.
The ministry said it was investigating how she contracted the
disease and whether there was a bird flu outbreak in the surrounding area of
where she lived.
The woman showed symptoms of a fever and pneumonia on
January 12 and arrived in critical condition at a contagious diseases hospital
in Chengdu. Five days later, Cao tested positive for the H5N1 strain of bird
flu, the ministry said.
Authorities said individuals who have had close
contact with Cao were under medical observation, but no abnormal symptoms were
reported thus far.
The Chinese mainland's sixth bird flu fatality was a
35-year-old woman who died on January 11, also in Sichuan. The woman, surnamed
Wei, was from Jianyang City, about 50 kilometers east of Chengdu.
The woman
was a butcher and had contact with poultry every day.
Of the other five
deaths reported on the mainland, two were in Anhui Province, with one each in
Jiangxi and Fujian provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
There
have been 10 reported cases of bird flu among humans on the mainland since
November.
Also yesterday, a monthlong quarantine against one of the human
cases, a 6-year-old boy, was lifted in central China's Hunan
Province.
Doctors at the Hunan Provincial Children's Hospital said the
Guiyang County boy, known as Ouyang, recovered after the H5N1 strain of the
virus damaged his internal systems, according to Xinhua news agency.
Ouyang's
coughing has lessened in frequency, according to the
hospital.
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