Bird flu patient's serum used as treatment
5/3/2007 9:25
The farmer from East China's Anhui Province, who contracted the deadly
H5N1 strain of bird flu last December but was later cured of the disease, has
donated his serum for treatment of a rural Chinese woman who was confirmed last
month to be infected with the same virus.
Xu Longshan, spokesman and
chief of the Fujian Provincial Professional Panel for Prevention and Control of
Human Infection of Bird Flu, said on Saturday health workers from Anhui Province
on Thursday escorted the farmer, identified by his surname as Li, to Fuzhou,
capital of Fujian Province, where experts from the blood center affiliated to
the Fujian Provincial Bureau of Health got serum from him the second
day.
Li has returned home.
"The serum was brought to Jian'ou on
the same day, and so far, medical workers have carried out the first round of
injection on the woman who was just confirmed of being infected of the lethal
strain of the avian disease," said Xu.
"The method is new but certainly
will be of some benefit in improving the woman's capability of fighting against
new rounds of infection," said Xu, who admitted it would take some time before
the woman could develop her own immunity against the disease.
Li from
Fujian, 44, is a native of Damiao Village, a marketplace in the mountainous
township of Xiaosong. The woman, who kept five chickens at her home, developed
symptoms including fever on February 18. She had visited village clinics and
township hospitals before being hospitalized on February 24 in the Jian'ou City
Hospital.
She ate two chickens she had raised, but her husband and son,
who also ate the chickens, have not developed bird flu.
Xu said the woman
patient developed rapidly progressing pneumonia and went into a coma.
Xinhua news
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