The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Tuesday night confirmed a new case of human infection of bird flu in Ziyuan County of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

A man sanitizes a corner at a village in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region on December 4, 2005.

The patient is a 10-year-old girl student surnamed Tang, who has been ill with fever and pneumonia since November 23, said an MOH press release.

The girl has been tested positive with the H5N1 virus by the China Disease Prevention and Control Center, and she has been under emergency treatment in hospital.

Tang has been confirmed to be infected with bird flu in accordance with the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government.

People who have close contacts with the patient have been brought under medical observation by local health departments. So far, no abnormities have been found among these people.

The regional health department and MOH have sent expert teams to direct and coordinate disease prevention and control in the area. Currently, experts are making further investigation in the source of the bird flu virus, since no bird flu cases have been reported in the county before.

In addition, the ministry has reported the case to the WHO, the country's Hong Kong and Macao special administration regions and Taiwan, and some foreign nations, the press release said.

Previously, China reported three human cases of bird flu and one suspicious case.

Leading poverty reduction officials yesterday said China appreciates, and will continue to look for, foreign funds to help improve the lives of the country's poor.

"We won't forget the active support of international organizations and countries concerned about China's poverty-reduction undertakings, and NGOs and philanthropists who have helped in China's poverty-relief achievements," said Liu Jian, the country's top poverty relief official.

The government hopes to strengthen international co-operation to cope with a range of new scenarios and problems in the fight against destitution, the chief of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development said yesterday.

Liu made the remarks at a seminar in Beijing to mark the role foreign capital has played in China's poverty reduction over the past 10 years.

Since 1995, the Foreign Capital Project Management Centre under Liu's office has overseen implementation of projects involving foreign funds of more than US$800 million, centre Director Jiang Xiaohua said.

Between 1981 and 2002, loans from international financial organizations for poverty relief in China approached US$8 billion, according to official statistics.

Along with domestic efforts, foreign aid has helped reduce the number of rural residents living in abject poverty from 65 million in 1995 to 26.1 million in 2004, by which time 95 percent of the 592 State-designated poor counties had roads, electricity and telephones, said Liu.

In addition to accelerating the poverty relief process and improving the poverty situation in China, foreign-funded projects have also brought new development concepts to China, and paved the way for sustainable development of the targeted regions through training and participation of poor people, Jiang said.

While international development organizations are continually prioritizing poverty eradication, support from rich countries to aid poor ones has been declining, despite the repeated commitment of the world's governments to contribute 0.7 percent of their gross national product to official development assistance, Jiang said.

Meanwhile, unfair global trade rules have enlarged the wealth gap, he said.

Some foreign governments and international financial organizations have readjusted their support strategies with regard to China, which has sustained rapid economic growth amid increasing global competitiveness, Jiang said.

"The reduction or discontinuation of favourable loans from international organizations has added to (China's) difficulty in using foreign capital to relieve poverty," he said.

In addition to the 26.1 million absolute poor, China has an even greater number of transient poor, who continue to need assistance to begin to achieve their full potential, said Jemal-ud-din Kassum, vice-president for East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank.

The poor are increasingly concentrated in remote areas among the most severely disadvantaged populations, said Sari Soderstrom, another World Bank official, adding that close to 200 million people still live below US$1 a day almost all of them in the rural areas.

Aside from assiduous efforts by the Chinese government and people, aid from the international community remains crucial to resolving a chain of fresh problems in China's poverty reduction, including rural poverty and the plight of rural women, Jiang said.

In partnership with international organizations such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, China will develop projects to support agricultural and social development in central and western parts of the country and the old Northeast industrial bases, Liang Ziqian, a division director of the Ministry of Finance, said.

(China Daily December 7, 2005)