Dr. Masato Tashiro, a Japanese World Health Organization consultant, believes 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. Masato, 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 this 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 WHO, Masato 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.

Masato visited China on behalf of WHO in Hunan province. His laboratory, at the National Institute for Infection Research in Tokyo is one of the Asian points of contact for the United Nations and had been particularly entrusted with investigations into avian influenza in Asia and China. Masato gave his lecture in the University of Marburg Clinic before some the leading virologists in the world and shocked the meeting with his unauthorized [and unsubstantiated] report from inside China.

The Japanese virologist said he believes in the reliability of the source and its data. The secrecy of the Peking government is causing concern — as it was at the beginning of the SARS epidemic disease — noted Masato. At least five medical co-workers who should be reporting on the situation in the provinces were arrested, and other researchers were threatened with punishment if they released the information, Masato said.