The Flimsy Wall of China; A health-care system in ruins may be the world's forward line of defense.(avian flu)(Cover Story)

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 31-OCT-05

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Byline: Melinda Liu

There's hardly a better spawning ground for a bird-flu pandemic. If the virus makes the leap to human-to-human transmission, the odds are strong that it will happen in China. The place is home to 1.3 billion humans--three quarters of them still living on the farm--and more than 10 times that number of chickens, ducks and other domestic poultry. Those farmers keep 70 percent of the world's pigs, which can be walking petri dishes for mutating strains of flu. To...

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