China Denies Bird Flu Cover-up

Posted on November 26, 2005

Red Orbit reports that the China's Ministry of Health is denying an accusation by a Japanese scientist that China was covering up hundreds of human bird flu deaths.

Beijing, 25 November: Commenting on a recent Internet report that alleges that "a Japanese virus expert has claimed that hundreds of Chinese people have died from avian influenza," Mao Qunan, spokesman for China's Ministry of Health, said to Xinhua during an interview that the allegation was strictly a rumour.
Mao Qunan said: "The Ministry of Health and the WHO have confirmed that none of the experts whom WHO commissioned to investigate avian influenza in Hunan was a Japanese virus expert. The report that says that this expert has claimed that hundreds of Chinese have died because of avian influenza infection is untrue."

The Japanese scientist Masato Tashiro told New Scientist that he thought China's officially reported death toll of 3 was just the tip of the iceberg.

Tashiro has now told New Scientist that the figures were examples of the "unauthorised information" circulating in China, where he was recently helping investigate the outbreak in Hunan for the WHO.
Earlier reports suggested that Tashiro believed 300 to be the true death toll from bird flu in China. "I do not know whether the numbers were based on any evidence," he says.
But the message is that "we do not know how many cases actually occurred in China", due to poor disease surveillance. "If surveillance is done more extensively, more cases may be detected." He says the international community should assist China with monitoring. He describes the situation as an "iceberg phenomenon" -- with most cases unreported.

Hopefully there are not hundreds of human bird flu deaths in China. However, China is known for hiding facts that might make the country look bad. As you may recall from the SARS outbreak China initially covered up SARS and SARS deaths which allowed SARS to spread into other countries and made SARS much more difficult to stop. And just recently China has been accused of trying to hush up the recent toxic spill into the Songhua River.