Death toll mounts

China reports new human bird flu death

Staff and agencies
14 August, 2006

6 minutes ago

BEIJING - A farmer has died of bird flu in far western China, the 14th person to die of the disease in the country.

The case brings China‘s total number of human bird flu infections to 21, Xinhua said. The tally includes a case the government confirmed last week occurred in 2003, two years before China publicly acknowledged its first human infection.

The 2003 case, disclosed by Chinese researchers in June in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine , raised questions about Beijing‘s ability to detect emerging diseases.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 138 people worldwide since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, according to a tally kept by the World Health Organization .

© 2006 The Associated Press.