China's health minister defended the government on Wednesday against accusations of a cover-up of bird flu cases, saying doctors in rural areas might be too ill-equipped and ill-trained even to detect avian flu infections.
"I am not worried about governments at various levels covering up an epidemic," Gao Qiang told a news conference.
"But I am worried about the inability of our medical and quarantine personnel at the local level to diagnose and discover epidemics in a timely fashion due to their low abilities and relatively backward equipment," Gao added.
Source. Today China announced the country's 30th avian flu outbreak of the year.