22.11.2005

A front page article in the respected German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, yesterday said that Dr. Masato Tashiro, a Japanese WHO consultant, believed that China has had 300 human deaths from avian influenza and is hiding the true extent of the disease from the rest of the world.
Dr. Masato Tashiro, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Influenza at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Tokyo, and head of the Department of Virology of the National Institute of Infectious Disease (Japan), astonished colleagues with the information during a speech at a recent retirement dinner for a fellow virologist, Hans-Dieter Klenk. 
Having just returned from the Hunan province of China on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), the virologist claimed that a reliable source had provided him with details of the true nature of the H5N1 virus in China. "We are systematically deceived" , he is reported to have said. 
Tashiro visit China on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Hunan province. His laboratory, at the National institute for Infection Research in Tokyo, had been particularly entrusted as one of the Asian points of contact for the United Nations with investigations to the avian influenza in Asia and in China. Dr. Masato gave is lecture in the University of Marburg Clinic, before some the most outstanding virologists in the world and shocked the meeting with his unauthorised data souvenir from inside China. 
The Japanese virologist firmly believes in the reliability of the source and its data. "We are systematically deceived." The secrecy and the repressive-politics of the Peking government is still causing concern as it was at the beginning of the SARS epidemic disease, complained Tashiro. At least five medical co-workers, who should report on the situation in the provinces were arrested, publication-willing researchers were threatened with punishments.