Beijing: Bird flu virus has killed at least one person in China, officials said on Wednesday, confirming the spread of the deadly virus into people in China where it might prove hard to contain.
One victim in eastern Anhui had died and another, a nine-year old boy in the central province of Hunan, was suspected of having been killed by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu virus, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
A second person diagnosed with bird flu virus in Hunan had recovered, the report said.
The deadly H5N1 form of bird flu virus has already killed over 60 people in Asia and is endemic in poultry in parts of the region.
Though the virus remains hard for people to catch, experts fear it could mutate into a form that passes easily among people.
World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman Roy Wadia said it was no surprise that bird flu had spread to humans in the world?s most populous nation.
"It's not a surprise. It shows that China like other countries that have bird flu in poultry can have human cases," Wadia said.
China has been trying to contain about a dozen outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus among poultry in at least six provinces in the past month.
Asian countries are scrambling to halt the spread of bird flu virus, with mass culling of birds and vaccination of poultry. China on Tuesday announced plans to vaccinate billions of birds.
Dr Robert Webster, an influenza expert at St Jude Children?s Research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee, said it was too late for a large-scale cull of poultry in countries like China.
"Poultry vaccines are the key," Webster told a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Migratory flocks have carried the lethal strain into birds in eastern Europe and Kuwait and experts believe it will soon reach Africa.
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