AN OUTBREAK of “bird flu” in a Hong Kong family who visited Fujian province in southern China is fuelling fears that the country will be the source of the next global flu pandemic.
“China is a huge country and surveillance [for the virus] is poor,” says Graeme Laver, who helped develop the anti-flu drug Relenza at the Australian National University in Canberra. Flu experts are fearful because Chinese practices of keeping large numbers of different birds in close proximity to humans favours the emergence of new strains of flu.
The family, who had visited Fujian for the Chinese New Year,…
