A 19-year-old Chinese soldier has died of the H5N1 bird flu strain, the country's 16th reported death from the virus, the WHO and China's health ministry said yesterday.
The man, stationed in the southern province of Fujian, died on Sunday after being hospitalized on May 14 with a fever and cough, said Joanna Brent, a spokeswoman for WHO's Beijing office.
The Health Ministry, which gave the soldier's surname as Cheng, informed the WHO about the death on Sunday but did not give any details about his case, including how he contracted the disease or exactly where he was posted, Brent said.
"We're always concerned about cases of bird flu," she said.
The People's Liberation Army has put all the man's close contacts under observation, and "so far there are no clinical abnormalities," she said.
We understand it's an individual case," Brent said.
One of China's two other reported human cases of bird flu this year was a farmer in Fujian, but Brent said Cheng was not near that area.
In a brief statement, the health ministry confirmed the death but did not elaborate.
The man died "after his condition worsened and efforts by experts to save him were ineffective," the ministry said.
All those under observation have been released, it said.
China's military is extremely secretive, which complicates cooperation with international organizations.
Telephones were not answered at the Ministry of National Defense.
Last year, it was disclosed that new tests on the body of a 24-year-old soldier who died in 2003 in Beijing confirmed he succumbed to bird flu — one of the earliest deaths in a resurgent wave of the illness that swept through the region.
The military has yet to provide a promised virus sample from that case, the WHO has said.
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