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BEIJING, Oct 29 (AFP): The World Health Organization (WHO) requested more information on the death of a 12-year-old girl in an area hit by bird flu as complaints of sluggish business emerged from big-city poultry markets.
WHO has sent a letter, that Chinese health ministry officials will receive Monday, asking for specific details about the girl who China claims died of pneumonia.
"We need more information to confirm or deny any association with avian influenza or not," Beijing-based WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told AFP.
Earlier reports said the girl, He Yin, died after showing flu-like symptoms in a village in central Hunan province hit by the virus.
She and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago at their home in Wantang village after eating a sick chicken that died, the reports said.
China's health ministry late Friday provided the WHO with information on the case, but it only contained very general data such as the time of the girl's infection, Bhatiasevi said.
"We do not know what samples were taken, what tests were conducted, when the tests were conducted," she said.
"Also we would like to have more epidemiological information on the likelihood of the girl's exposure to the poultry in that area or the poultry in her house which was said to have died," she said.
The agriculture ministry Friday insisted that no human cases of bird flu -- which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 -- have so far been documented anywhere in China.
China has reported three outbreaks of bird flu in the past week, in the northern region of Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Anhui and Hunan.
The WHO does not have personnel in the part of Hunan affected by bird flu, but would like to go if given the green light, said Bhatiasevi.
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