Bird Flu Subtype Reemerges in Hong Kong: Official

December 31, 2013 Leave a comment

Bird Flu Subtype Reemerges in Hong Kong: Official

By Agence France-Presse on 7:13 pm December 30, 2013.
Hong Kong. An elderly man has contracted a mild form of bird flu in the first case of its type for four years, Hong Kong officials said on Monday. “We are now investigating a confirmed human case of influenza A H9N2, affecting a man aged 86,” Leung Ting-hung, controller of the city’s Center for Health Protection, told reporters.H9N2 is an avian flu subtype that mainly affects ducks and chickens but can also pass to humans, causing mild symptoms. Under Hong Kong law cases of such infection must be made public, according to Leung.

Since 1999 Hong Kong has reported seven such cases with the last one reported in 2009, Leung said.

The man, who lives in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen bordering Hong Kong, was diagnosed with the disease after returning to Hong Kong on Saturday.

He is now in stable condition in an isolation ward.

“As the temperature is cooler in recent weeks, we expect there may be other cases of avian influenza being detected,” Leung said.

On Thursday the city reported the first death from the more serious H7N9 strain of bird flu.

The male victim had returned from Shenzhen, as had a woman who contracted Hong Kong’s first reported case of H7N9. She is still in hospital in stable condition.

Scientists have warned that avian flu could potentially cause a pandemic if it mutates into a form easily transmissible between humans.

Agence France-Presse

Filed under Health

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
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.

Leave a comment