media - bird flu: SARS is just around the corner

The report that China only disclosed the country had its first bird flu victim, contracted late 2003, 30 months after it occurred has startled the world yet again.

"This issue has exposed problems in our scientific research organisations," Jiang Zuojun, Vice Minister of Health, said at a news conference.

It brings back the problems caused by Sars earlier in 2003, when China's health systems tried to conceal the highly contagious disease. It caused to much embarrassment, the government promised that would never happen again. Even administrative firefighter Madame Wu Yi was for the time appointed as minister of health to deal with the crisis.
Part of the 'communication problems' was that army hospitals were no administrative part of the health system, so Sars-patients in military hospitals were initially not included in the counts. Since the Sars-virus did not bother about those Chinese administrative divides, severe communication problems occurred.
So, the fact that at the end of that year a 24-year old soldier contracted bird flu, even before Vietnam came in the picture, makes clear how embarrassing the disclosure is.