China confirms human case of bird flu, Indonesia and WHO close to resolving sample dispute

China reported a new human case of bird flu on Thursday as Indonesia and the World Health Organization drew closer to resolving a dispute over virus samples that could be used to develop a commercial vaccine against the disease.

Also Thursday, officials in Myanmar said the United Nations has pledged assistance in coping with an outbreak discovered on a poultry farm on the outskirts of its largest city, Yangon.

The human infection in China occurred in the coastal province of Fujian, where a 44-year-old farmer surnamed Li was diagnosed on Feb. 18 after he developed a fever and began coughing, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

It was the mainland's first human case of bird flu since Jan. 10, when the government said a 37-year-old farmer in Anhui province in eastern China had contracted bird flu but had recovered.

Xinhua said tests by the provincial disease control and prevention center showed Li had been infected with the H5N1 virus strain and that the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the result on Feb. 27.

The report did not say whether the farmer worked with poultry or whether infected birds were found, but said that she had "made contact with dead fowl."

In Indonesia, Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said a letter of guarantee from WHO Director General Margaret Chan was expected to arrive Thursday, after which "Indonesia will resume sending as soon as possible" samples of bird flu virus to the U.N. health body.

The agreement will almost certainly resolve the stand off between WHO and Indonesia, which triggered a storm of criticism last month by withholding samples because it was worried that large drug companies will use its H5N1 strain to make vaccines that will be too expensive for developing nations in the event of a global pandemic that could kill millions.

Several countries are developing vaccines to protect against H5N1, which has been responsible for at least 167 human deaths worldwide, more than one-third of them in Indonesia.

The virus remains essentially an animal disease, but experts fear it may mutate into a form easily spreadable between humans, triggering a pandemic.

Meanwhile, Tang Zang Ping, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Myanmar, said the agency was assisting in isolation of poultry farms, disinfection and culling of birds after H5N1 was detected in a western suburb of Yangon.

Myanmar officials say the latest outbreak has affected chickens, ducks and pullets, killing 68 birds. Another 1,292 birds were deemed susceptible to the disease and destroyed.

Myanmar's last reported an H5N1 outbreak among poultry in March last year but has not had any human cases. Neighboring Thailand has reported 25 human infections, including 17 deaths. Laos, another neighbor, on Tuesday reported its first confirmed human case.

The victim, a 15-year-old girl from the capital, Vientiane, is being treated in a hospital in northeastern Thailand.

Joanna Brent, a spokeswoman for the WHO's Beijing office, said 22 out of China's 23 human cases _ including the latest in Fujian _ "have not been forewarned by a poultry outbreak," a sign of weakness in its animal surveillance system. In Fujian itself, three human infections have been reported but no sickness in birds, she said.

"This suggests that strategies for monitoring H5N1 in poultry need further strengthening. An exclusive focus on outbreaks is no longer sufficient," Brent said. "All countries need to implement surveillance strategies to monitor where the virus is circulating and how the virus is changing."

China has suffered 14 human deaths from bird flu and dozens of cases in the country's vast poultry flocks. Millions of birds have been destroyed in order to contain outbreaks on farms.