Chan gained international renown when she led Hong Kong's public health department at a time it faced the world's first known human outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in 1997. Her swift reaction, ordering the slaughter of the province's entire poultry population about 1.5 million birds in just three days was applauded and is said to have prevented a major human health crisis

Last week World Health Organization (WHO) officials in Beijing charged that the ministry was withholding information on bird flu and had not shared virus samples with the UN body.
[Jia]…said that there had been a delay in transmitting the samples, which he ascribed to Beijing's scrupulous attention to safety regulations.
"I want the journalists to understand that those viruses are highly virulent," he said.
"It is difficult to transport them. If anything happens during the course of the transportation, the consequences would be very serious."
[…snip...]
"We are very encouraged because actually today the viruses have been shipped to our WHO collaborating center," said Hank Bekedam, the WHO's chief representative in China. "We are very encouraged and we are now looking for the next phase."
Jia said that the Chinese government intended to step up its cooperation with multilateral health organizations.

China Rejects Bird Flu Accusations Nov. 10, 2006.

Originally posted by RetinoidReceptor
This is all strange considering the fact that I have not heard nor read anything about the bird flu for a while now. I thought it has mitigated.

Despite mass vaccinations of poultry in China, the bird flu virus continues to evolve. Samples collected from poultry markets in southern China over the last year show that a variant of the virus has spread outward from a single province and supplanted strains in the rest of the region, researchers report. The result calls into question the steps taken so far to contain the virus, which public health officials fear could give rise to a deadly worldwide flu pandemic

Scientific American Oct. 30, 2006.