... there had been no known sustained human to human transmission of the deadly virus, but called for stepping up disease surveillance among poultry and humans worldwide.

"This is more evidence [referring to Indonesian deaths] for us to be concerned about developments in the region," Chan told a news briefing.

"This is perhaps the only time since 1968, which was the last pandemic, that we are getting signs, symptoms and warnings from nature ... More and more birds are dying in different parts of the world -- this is the kind of signals, and early warnings that we are referring to."

We need to be very vigilant and look for early signals or signs of sustained human to human transmission," she said. "We need to advise people from farm to table on what actions they can take or can advise communities to take to reduce that risk."

A US-based Chinese-language news website known as Boxun, or "Abundant News", has riveted the online medical community over the past month with a series of reports from China's Qinghai province about an alleged bird flu cover-up. One report - said to be leaked by a Chinese official - claimed that 121 people were dead from avian influenza, or H5N1.

The media reports are said to have come from nine correspondents in Qinhai, who report that people connected to the cases have been forbidden to talk to outsiders. Boxun cautions that the reports cannot be independently verified, but says it hopes by drawing attention to them they can be further investigated.

The reports say that sick people in the border region between Qinghai and the neighbouring, impoverished province of Gansu had visited the nature reserve where the birds were found. But they also report that there have been large scale outbreaks of unexplained deaths among livestock in the area.

China has never reported any human cases of H5N1. These have so far been reported only in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Scientists believe this may be due to a small genetic variation in the virus that has circulated there among domestic poultry.

China did report 50 outbreaks of H5N1 in domestic poultry right across China in 2004, from Guangdong in the southeast to Tibet in the far west. The sparseness of the reported outbreaks over such a wide region has led some scientists to fear that the virus is present in many more places.

Outbreaks may either not have been reported, or the virus may has circulated undetected due to the widespread vaccination of poultry against H5N1. In the past, the Chinese authorities denied that there were cases of SARS in Beijing when it later transpired there had been.

I googled Boxun and was immediately surprised a second time to find it has a .com URL, rather than a Chinese .cn tag. The third surprise was to see photos from Tiananmen Square on the site, including the famous one of the man standing in front of the tanks.

This was not a site in China. Eventually I learned that Boxun is based in the US, and is apparently run by dissident Chinese.

The questions now are these: How did Boxun get this information? How were people in Qinghai able to gather news of these animal and human deaths, and how were they then able to email or phone their news outside China? Doing so could get them into big trouble with the Public Security Bureau, whose skill with computer communications created the Great Firewall of China in the first place. And indeed, Niman today is reporting a number of arrests in Qinghai.

Phnom Penh - Cambodia's hospitals have been swamped by about 1 000 young children suffering acute respiratory infections this month, a senior health official said on Wednesday.

At least 60 infants aged two months to five years have been admitted daily, but said no fatalities have been reported, health ministry secretary of state Heng Tay Kry told AFP.

"About 1 000 infant patients have been hospitalised in four big hospitals in recent days with acute respiratory infections," he said, adding that the children were suffering from a human form of influenza.

"It has been an unprecedented and strange year (for infections), but it is not critical like bird flu. No one has died yet," he said.

The deadly avian influenza, or H5N1, has been responsible for four Cambodian deaths and dozens more in neighbouring Vietnam and Thailand.

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