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China reports bird flu in humans

North Korea taking threat seriously

— PHOTO: AP

A young Indonesian bird flu patient studies with her mother at a hospital in Jakarta on Sunday.

BEIJING: China said on Sunday that it had asked for outside help to test three possible cases of bird flu in humans, as Japan considered giving 300 million yen ($2.6 million) to the World Health Organization to help developing countries fight the virus and other infectious diseases.

North Korea, meanwhile, announced that it was taking the threat of bird flu seriously, and had implemented measures to prevent an outbreak.

China, which has had four outbreaks of the deadly and virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu among poultry in the past three weeks, said it had asked the WHO to help determine whether the death of a 12-year-old girl last month was caused by the virus.

There have been no confirmed human deaths in China from bird flu, which has killed at least 62 persons across Southeast Asia. But on Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that Chinese experts ``cannot rule out the possibility of human transmission of H5N1 bird flu'' in the cases of three persons in Wantang in central Hunan province who came down with pneumonia last month following a bird flu outbreak among local poultry.

One of them — the 12-year-old girl — died. Her 9-year-old brother and a 36-year-old middle school teacher recovered. Chinese officials initially said the girl and her brother tested negative for the bird flu virus.

Since late 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia and jumped from birds to humans. Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact with infected birds. — AP

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