Map Credit Laidback Al on FluTrackers
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Yesterday Crof blogged (see H7N9: Four flu experts will be in China soon) on a Bloomberg story indicating that four Internationally renown flu experts were soon to travel to China to help authorities in their fight against the H7N9 virus.
While encouraging, as Jason Gale reported, the Chinese government had not yet `officially’ announced the decision. The following excerpt from:
China Said to Invite Four Flu Experts as Disease Outbreak Widens
Nancy Cox, director of the flu division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Anne Kelso, director of a World Health Organization flu research center in Melbourne, Malik Peiris from the University of Hong Kong, and Angus Nicoll, head of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s flu program, will arrive on about April 17 to offer technical advice, said the people, who declined to be identified because the Chinese government hasn’t announced that the experts are being invited.
It now appears official, as this morning we have this announcement (machine translated) from the Chinese Ministry of Health.
Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China www.moh.gov.cn
Since March of this year, our part of the region have found that people infected with the H7N9 avian influenza. Up at 8:00 on April 15, reported a total of 60 patients diagnosed with the virus, confirmed cases were reported in the April 13 and 14 in Beijing, Henan.
After the outbreak, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the World Health Organization to maintain close cooperation, the first time the WHO has informed epidemic information, and by the Chinese Center for Disease Control World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for the WHO and its United States, United Kingdom Australia, Japan Cooperation Center shared the H7N9 strain of the virus.
For the to do epidemic prevention and control work, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the World Health Organization recently agreed to co-organization "of human infection with the H7N9 avian flu prevention and control of the joint study group" epidemic for me to carry out a week-long joint assessment, comprehensive, objective, scientifically analysis and assessment of the epidemic prevention and control work, and to provide recommendations for my next step prevention and control measures.
The joint study group will include China epidemiological, laboratory and clinical experts, as well as the United States, European Union, Australia, and WHO experts and officials. The study results will be announced to the public in a timely manner
