BEIJING, Nov 21 — China said it will punish officials caught concealing deaths from the H1N1 flu, after a doctor — famous for exposing the extent of the 2003 Sars epidemic — said suspect cases may have been covered up by local governments.
The Health Ministry said it has adopted a new H1N1 accounting method earlier this month. If a person was confirmed with H1N1 and then died, the case should be reported as death from H1N1, whether or not there was another condition.
Health Ministry spokesman Deng Haihua said it was “strictly prohibited to conceal, omit, or delay reports of Influenza A (H1N1) deaths”, adding that those who did so would be held accountable, according to a notice on the ministry’s website posted late on Thursday.
The statement also said that teams from the ministry have been sent to 12 provinces and regions to inspect anti-flu efforts.
China’s earlier method attributed the death to previously existing conditions but not to H1N1, thereby reducing the number of cases reported as H1N1 death cases, a separate notice on the Health Ministry’s website said.
Suspicions of a cover-up were fuelled on Thursday when medical expert Zhong Nanshan questioned the official nationwide tally of 53 deaths out of nearly 70,000 cases. He was quoted by the Southern Metropolis Daily.
“I do not believe the current nationwide figures on Influenza A (H1N1) deaths,” said Dr Zhong, who heads the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases in southern China.
His opinion carries weight because he became something of a national hero when he openly defied the official line on Sars to help reveal the true extent of the epidemic.
He said that some areas have not been testing deaths from severe pneumonia and treating them as cases of ordinary pneumonia without any question.
China’s official H1N1 death rate is far lower than the global average, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose latest figures show 6,260 people had died worldwide out of more than 503,000 cases.
The UN health body’s China spokesman Vivian Tan in Beijing said: “We don’t think anything unusual is happening here, in terms of how the virus is spreading or how virulent it is.” The WHO does not have a standard for which deaths to attribute to H1N1, although it defines how to diagnose cases, she said.
The H1N1 flu strain affects the respiratory tract. Patients who become severely ill or die typically suffer from pneumonia, either brought on directly by the virus or due to secondary bacterial infections. — Straits Times
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