China reports 17th human death from H5N1 bird flu virus

SHANGHAI, China -- A man in southern China's Jiangsu province has died of bird flu, becoming the country's 17th official fatality from the disease, the government said Monday.

The 24-year-old man, whose surname was given as Lu, died Sunday at a hospital and tests confirmed he was suffering from the difficult-to-treat H5N1 virus, the Jiangsu Provincial Disease Control and Prevention Center said in a statement on its Web site.

Phone calls to the center early Monday rang unanswered.

The report said the man had no known contact with dead poultry, and there were no reported outbreaks of bird flu in the province. He developed chills, fever and other symptoms on Nov. 24 and was hospitalized three days later, it said.

As a precaution, 69 people with close contacts to Lu were put under medical observation, the statement said.

China, which raises more poultry than any other country in the world, has vowed an aggressive fight against H5N1, which has sickened at least 335 people worldwide, killing 206 of them, according to the World Health Organization.

The upsurge in H5N1 bird flu outbreaks around the world has led to the slaughter of millions of birds across Asia since late 2003. It remains endemic throughout Indonesia and in parts of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Egypt, Nigeria and China.

China has reported sporadic outbreaks of the disease among poultry and 26 human cases, including the most recent.

Experts have warned that if outbreaks among poultry are not controlled, the virus may mutate into a form more easily passed between people, potentially resulting in millions of deaths.