New Bird Flu Virus Kills 2 in China, Sparking WHO Probe

April 3, 2013 Leave a comment

New Bird Flu Virus Kills 2 in China, Sparking WHO Probe

A new strain of bird flu sickened four people and killed two in eastern China, prompting the World Health Organization to investigate whether the virus has the potential to spread easily among people. The H7N9 strain of avian influenza struck two people in Shanghai, one in Anhui province, and a fourth in the city of Nanjing, according to the Geneva-based WHO and China Central Television. Two of the people died and a third is in critical condition, the United Nations health agency said in a statement yesterday. No link between the cases has been identified, and no further infections have been found among 88 contacts of the first three patients, the WHO said, suggesting the virus isn’t easily transmissible between people. The fourth case is a 45- year-old woman who slaughters poultry at a local farmers’ market, CCTV reported on its website today. “This is of concern,” Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, said by phone today. “These are the first cases we’ve seen in human beings. We’re watching this very closely.” The virus is genetically an avian flu virus, and hasn’t mixed with human or pig pathogens, Hartl said. The WHO is looking into whether the virus has evolved to become more of a threat to humans, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Geneva at sbennett9@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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