Late bird flu report a communication problem-China

BEIJING, Aug 10 (Reuters) A Chinese health official said today that communication problems were behind China's two-and-a-half year delay in reporting the country's first human case of the H5N1 bird flu.

China on Tuesday acknowledged that a 24-year-old soldier based in Beijing had contracted bird flu in late 2003, confirming details disclosed by Chinese researchers in June letter to a U S medical journal.

Previously, the government had said the first case had occurred at the end of 2005, and the delay in reporting the earlier case has prompted the U N's health agency to call for greater transparency.

''This issue has exposed problems in our scientific research organisations,'' Jiang Zuojun, Vice Minister of Health, said at a news conference.

China now has confirmed 20 cases, 13 of which were fatal, including the 2003 case that was confirmed on Tuesday, the WHO said.

The virus has killed 137 people worldwide since 2003.

China's Health Ministry had said military scientists first tested the soldier and found he had been infected with H5N1 but did not tell the health ministry until much later.

''Their communications with disease prevention organisations should be strengthened in future,'' Jiang said.

China confirmed the case only after Chinese researchers published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine in June saying a soldier, who had died after being admitted to hospital in November 2003 for respiratory distress and pneumonia, had been infected with H5N1.

Subsequent tests in cooperation with the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the researchers' findings.

The WHO said the soldier was the first confirmed case in the world's present outbreak, preceding a case in Vietnam.

The case of the soldier had spurred questions on whether other human H5N1 infections in China had developed prior to its first reported human case, near the end of 2005.

Jiang said there were no recorded cases of bird flu prior to the soldier because there was no data. He said the soldier's disease was initially a puzzle only confirmed as bird flu by lengthy tests.

''At the time, we had incomplete standards for diagnosis...

From the data we have at hand, which starts from 2003, that was the first case,'' he said.

The scientists' findings were one of the clearest indications yet that the virus might have been present in the vast country for much longer than had been reported.

Experts in Hong Kong have long insisted that the virus has long been present in mainland China, but Chinese authorities have denied that.

REUTERS SRS VV1540