By staff reporters Xu Chao and Liu Jingjing

From Caijing Online

Public health officials shut down the poultry market in Sanhe city of Hebei Province, examined 15 vendors there, and searched through other patients in Beijing for symptoms, but found none, they said.

A Fujian native, Huang Yan Qing came to the capital with her family in 2007. She lived in a shabby house on the outskirts of Beijing and worked temporary jobs.

On December 19, her friends bought nine ducks from a Hebei market and gave one to Huang. She helped gut it for a feast to celebrate the lunar holiday, her father told Caijing.

Five days later, she seemed to have caught a cold and ran a fever. On December 26, she went into Guanzhuang Hospital and later transferred to Luhe Hospital. Doctors diagnosed pneumonia.

But medicine didn’t lower her fever. On December 30, her father brought her to the more prestigious Beijing Chest Hospital, where she was kept on artificial respirators in the intensive care unit. On January 4, doctors told her family she had bird flu, and the next morning she died.

Beijing public health bureau announced her case to the public on January 6. They said that 116 people had contact with the infected girl, including 14 relatives and 102 medical workers, none of whom are in quarantine now. Among them, one nurse at Guanzhuang hospital ran a fever but has already recovered. Officials alerted hospitals, public health workers, and poultry inspectors.

To add financial burden to the family in mourning, her treatment at Beijing Chest Hospital cost 100,000 yuan but they have no means of paying.

Article in Chinese: http://www.caijing.com.cn/2009-01-07/110045768.html