Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
May 19th, 2013 | 
Author: Story By: by Scott Hensley
A car driven by a 19-year-old man crashed into a tree in Bates Township, Mich., in April. The Iron County Sheriff’s Department said investigators believed the driver, who survived the crash, was drunk and speeding.
To curb drunken driving, the federal National Transportation Safety Board has voted to recommend that states tighten the legal limit for drivers’ blood alcohol.
The threshold now for drunken driving is a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08. (The BAC equals alcohol divided by the volume of blood it’s in.)
The NTSB would push for it to be lowered to 0.05, in line with the limits in countries such as Denmark, the Philippines and Switzerland.
How many drinks would it take to run afoul of the new limit? The answer depends on weight, gender and how long a person has been drinking.
A man weighing 180 pounds who drank three beers in an hour would have a BAC of 0.052, according to a calculator on the Wisconsin Dept. of Transportation website. A 120-pound woman would hit the same level drinking two beers over 60 minutes.
At 0.05 BAC, drivers have worse coordination and can’t keep track of moving objects all that well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says.
“We need as much attention today on impaired driving as we saw in the early 1980s when organizations like MADD were founded and the drinking age became 21,” said the text of a speech to be given by Deborah A.P. Hersman, chairman of the NTSB, at the start of a two-day meeting on impaired driving. “Over that decade, real progress was achieved in the United States.”
More than 10,000 highway deaths in 2010 involved an alcohol-impaired driver, according to the NTSB. While that’s down from more than 18,000 in 1988, the NTSB says it could be reduced further still with strichter alcohol limits.
But it looks like a tough sell. “When the limit was .10, it was very difficult to get it lowered to .08,” Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for Governors Highway Safety Association told USA Today. “We don’t expect any state to go to .05.”
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These legs have supported her throughout her career as a dancer. But in her head, Kaslow struggled for years over whether to follow that path or her passion for psychology.
She eventually found a way to combine the two worlds, serving not only as a psychologist for the Atlanta Ballet, but also becoming a powerful force for providing accessible mental health care for disadvantaged women.
“I always wore a ballerina around my neck,” she said of the gold charm she’s had since age 13, which she wore Wednesday in her office at Emory University School of Medicine. “But I never talked about going to ballet. I just didn’t think I’d be taken seriously.”
Now, as the new president-elect of the American Psychological Association, Kaslow doesn’t worry about that anymore. Besides being an Emory professor and chief psychologist of Grady Health System, she is also the psychologist for the Atlanta Ballet, where some students call her “Doctor Dancer.”
Kaslow, 56, grew up in the Philadelphia area and started dancing when she was 3. She took classes in creative movement, which involved developing skills such as “prancing like a pony.”
Little Nadine knew she wanted to do something more than what the system had set out for her. She asked her mother who was the head of the school, so she could ask to learn real dance with the big kids. The boss told her she needed to be 5, but this didn’t deter her.
“I’d stand outside the class with the big kids and I would do it in the hallway,” she said. Finally, when she was 4, because of her persistence, she was allowed to start real ballet classes with 5-year-olds.
Choosing psychology
In high school and early college, Kaslow danced with the Pennsylvania Ballet. But when she applied to college, she wrote that she wanted to be a psychologist. It’s what her mother did, too, and she enjoyed reading books about psychological problems.
“I was one of those kids that, when other kids had problems, I was the one they’d come and talk to about their problems,” she said. “I really wanted to help people but I really wanted to understand through the human mind, human behavior and human relationships.”
Kaslow’s mother Florence Kaslow also took on leadership roles in the American Psychological Association and worked to start up the Journal of Family Psychology, which the younger Kaslow edits today. The men in her family also shared the same career: Kaslow’s brother and father worked together in financial planning for more than 20 years.
Kaslow’s mother told the association’s publication “Monitor” in 2001 her daughter “has been a source of extreme pride and joy for me, I love to hear how well she is doing and is received. Her work stands on its own.”
As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Kaslow studied depression in children and families; at the University of Houston, she focused on women and depression while getting her doctoral degree.
During graduate school, she continued taking ballet classes. In her head, it was a tug of war over whether she truly wanted a career in psychology or in dance. The director of the Houston Ballet then offered her a choice: She could have a position in the company, if she lost 15 pounds.
Perhaps because of the body-consciousness of ballet, Kaslow remembers with ease how much she weighed at various points in her life. As a Ph.D. student, she said, she was already 12 pounds thinner than she is right now. On her frame, not quite 5 feet tall, an additional 15-pound loss would be dramatic.
“I knew at that point that that was not a healthy lifestyle choice,” she said. “I was old enough and I was out of the system enough that I was able to stop and say that was it. That was my defining moment.”
She got her doctoral degree in 1983 and headed to the University of Wisconsin for her internship and postdoctoral fellowship training. Then, it was off to Yale University School of Medicine, where she was an assistant professor.
A patient that she had at this time made her once again confront her career choice. The same day Kaslow went for her licensing exam to become a psychologist, the patient took her own life.
Kaslow came to an important decision: “I would dedicate much of my life to understanding suicidal behavior in women. And in many ways it’s because of her death that I ended up on that trajectory.”
A compassionate healer
An opportunity at Emory caught Kaslow’s eye in 1990. As part of the position, she would be providing mental health care to people with limited resources. The university’s affiliation with the public Grady Health System was extremely appealing to her.
She got the job, which allowed her a combination of performing administrative work, teaching, supervising students, seeing patients and conducting research that could make a difference.
Grady Hospital is a Level 1 trauma center and burn center, and a “safety net” where police often bring people for mental health services. Kaslow is usually the first to jump in and conduct a debriefing with staff after traumatic incidents, said Michael Claeys, executive director at Grady Behavioral Health Services.
“People around the hospital call her when there are issues, and she’s just so good at pulling people together, and helping them work through the difficult emotions of death and grieving, the variety of shocking events that can happen in an environment like Grady,” he said.
Kaslow is a mentor to everyone, and will make time to help anyone, even students she barely knows, said Sarah Dunn, who was an intern and postdoctoral fellow under Kaslow and will soon begin working at a Grady-Emory psychiatric clinic. In her postdoctoral years, Dunn had health issues of her own and nearly dropped out of the program. Kaslow worked with her to make sure she stayed. A large painting of pink flowers on a blue background hangs in Kaslow’s Emory office today, a thank-you gift painted by Dunn.
“With her kindness and flexibility, I was able to get through it,” Dunn said.
Teaching and learning resilience
More than 280 publications have Kaslow’s name on them, spanning topics such as family violence, depression and suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, therapy for couples and families and pediatric psychology. She’s involved in many efforts toward addressing these issues. For instance, Kaslow will be leading a webcast on suicide prevention among children on May 15.
One of Kaslow’s key accomplishments was founding the Grady Nia Project, a program in suicide and domestic violence prevention for African-American women. The program aims to empower women to lead lives without violence, and boost their self-esteem. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the program has touched the lives of about 1,000 women.
“These women have taught me so much about resilience and strength and hope,” Kaslow said.
The program began with one sparsely attended support group. Now there are about 10 such groups, Kaslow said. In addition to being a research project, Nia offers a full range of services. Its advisory board members include a pastor, a police chief, and some of the women in the program. To some in this program, said Dunn, Kaslow is known as “Mother Nia” because she is “a mother to students and patients.”
Nia has research funding, but also benefits from numerous community partnerships. The Atlanta Botanical Gardens and the Atlanta Symphony have both donated passes so that the women can be exposed to new cultural offerings.
Kaslow’s eyes widen and gloss with emotion when she talks about her ultimate dream for these women.
“I have a wish that I could get the money to — this makes me sad to think about it — to build a really high-quality shelter for women and children that’s really nice, that’s personalized and yet large. There are so many people that come to us and when you ask them, ‘What’s the one thing I could do to make your life better?’ They say: ‘Have a safe place to live.’ “
Her dedication to these women is such that she is on call 24-7 for them, carrying a pager in case someone has a crisis at any hour as long as she’s in Atlanta. When she won the $25,000 Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award, she gave half of the money to Nia participants.
“She will take money out of her own pocket to help out these women,” Dunn said. “They can’t pay their electricity, they don’t have money to get home to see their kids — she will do whatever it takes.”
At the ballet
About five years ago, Kaslow started ballet classes at Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education. She met the center’s director, Sharon Story, and the Atlanta Ballet’s artistic director John McFall. It turned out, there was a way to reconcile her passion for ballet with her career in psychology.
Kaslow became the Atlanta Ballet’s first resident psychologist, helping the students and professional dancers through wellness programming and psychotherapy.
“She keeps dancing and brings her knowledge and compassion to our dancers and students to pursue their lives and passions with strength, confidence, and healthy well beings,” Story said in an e-mail. “Nadine is tiny in stature and a huge brilliant gem to all of us at Atlanta Ballet.”
When Kaslow started working with dancers in her capacity as a psychologist, she thought eating disorders would be a huge problem. Instead, she’s found other issues are more prevalent: Performance anxiety, balance between different activities and perfectionism.
Perfectionism in particular is a problem that Kaslow has struggled with herself, and something that she shares with some of the dancers she’s seen in therapy.
“I really talk to the dancers about, how do you think about doing your best, and being good enough, and what a realistic and attainable goal is, and I try to do that for myself as well,” she said.
The cultural norms of ballet are such that it’s hard to know when a dancer truly has an eating disorder, she said.
“When I weighed about 22 pounds less than I do now, I was told I looked like a hippopotamus,” she said. “The problem was that part of me believed them. But I look at myself now and I say, ‘Well, I don’t really look like a hippopotamus now, so I probably didn’t look like a hippopotamus 20 pounds less than this.’”
Kaslow sees many connections between the study of the mind and of human relationships.
“As a scientifically-minded psychologist, I build upon many of the qualities that served me and others well in the dance world — curiosity, persistence, patience, and a passion for the work,” she said. “As an educator, I know that when I am teaching dance or psychology, it is essential that I provide a facilitating environment that nurtures creativity, self-expression, self-acceptance, and a dedication to doing one’s best.”
High recognition
These days, awards are raining on Kaslow. In April, she received the “Inspiring Mentor Award” at Grady Health Foundation’s White Coat Grady Gala. She will be honored at this year’s Emory University commencement ceremony with the 2013 Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest honor that the university gives.
Her advice to graduates, she said, would be: “Follow your passions and your dreams. I wish I had gotten that message sooner, and that I didn’t feel like I had to choose (between dance and psychology) for so long.”
“I think Nadine’s biggest wish is that one day she will change the world,” Dunn said. “But I’m not sure if she truly comprehends that she already has.”
When he was 14, Zach was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer that mostly strikes children. His prognosis wasn’t great. Last May, with no more treatment options, he was given just a year to live.
Zach turned 18 on Friday. On Saturday he went to prom with his girl, Amy. His high school class graduates next month.
Zach began writing music after his cancer was diagnosed. His mom, Laura, was cleaning the family room downstairs last year when she found a folded-up piece of paper. She unfolded it to make sure it wasn’t a homework assignment.
“I read through it and then I realized what I was reading,” she says.
It was his first song, “Clouds.” Zach wrote it for himself and his family. He has since written many more.
“I fell down, down, down into this dark and lonely hole,” he sings at the beginning of the song.
His voice is beautiful, mellow — kind of reminiscent of Jack Johnson’s.
When Zach’s song was posted to YouTube it quickly went viral, getting more than 2.6 million page views.
Now there’s a new video you ought to see. On Monday, dozens of celebrities posted a love letter response — joining forces to lip sync to Zach’s voice, singing “Clouds.”
“And we’ll go up, up, up, but I’ll climb a little higher,” sing Jason Mraz, Anna Faris and Rainn Wilson.
“Go up in the clouds because the view’s a little nicer up here, my dear,” sing Bryan Cranston and Rachel Bilson, Ashley Tisdale and Colbie Caillat.
“It won’t be long now,” sing the Lumineers.
“If only,” sings Sarah Silverman, “I had a little bit more time.”
It’s a hello to Zach, and a farewell. It’s a collective expression of love and gratitude.
The motley crew of celebrities on the video was assembled by Wilson, an actor, and director/actor Justin Baldoni, who directed a short documentary about Zach for his compelling online reality series, “My Last Days,” which runs on Wilson’s SoulPancake YouTube channel.
“Going out to see Zach in Minnesota was one of the greatest experiences of my life,” says Baldoni. “To make the choice to be happy despite whatever sad or tragic circumstances you may be living through … he is this old soul who inspires everyone he meets. You leave and you think: ‘I want to be a better person.’”
Watch Baldoni’s film and you can see why.
There’s Zach, a fresh-faced Minnesotan teenager, in one of the opening frames, saying: “I want everyone to know: You don’t have to find out you’re dying to start living.”
He tells us at the beginning of the film: “You know most people live kind of in the middle, in between ‘all your dreams come true’ and ‘you’re dying,’ and it’s a very comfortable place to live. I’m living on the two extreme ends, so you have really, really good days and you have really, really bad days.”
He has lived on those extreme ends for the better part of the past four years. And how gloriously.
Zach’s sleeping most of the day now. His evenings are better. The other night he was able to muster up enough energy to bring out his guitar and play.
“It’s those times when we remember how it used to be,” says his mom.
She tells me about a trip the family took last year, “a sort of pilgrimage to Europe,” with 10 intense days of sightseeing.
“We packed a lot into those 10 days,” she recalls, “and maybe these past 3½ years have been like that pilgrimage. I haven’t had the chance to let it sink in. I don’t let myself go to that place of grief. There will be plenty of time to think about what we have lost later.”
“Right now … right now I feel really grateful,” she continues. “That is the core of what I feel. I still get up in the morning and look forward to the day.”
And maybe, she says, that is the lesson here: that no matter where you are in life, look at what you have and be grateful. It’s the kind of thing you hear all the time. Putting it into action takes some work sometimes. But there are always things in life to be grateful for, no matter where you are.
Being grateful is the doorway to all sorts of other good things, says Laura.
“That’s what Zach’s always been really good at: recognizing what is good and being grateful for it. It’s the first thing he seeks out, his starting point. He taught all of us how it’s done.”
Taylor Engel, one of the YouTube commenters on Zach’s video, writes: “Well, you got a 6′, 220 pound man sobbing his face off here. Prayers and thoughts with you, Zach…I hope someday I can be half the man you’ve become.”
I swallow a sob. Me too, I think as I watch the video.
At that moment, Zach sings: “And maybe someday I’ll see you again. We’ll float up in the clouds and we’ll never see the end …”
Story By: by Kevin Charles Redmon
Students select blueberries and rolls from the food line at Lincoln Elementary in Olympia, Wash., in 2004.
Gone are the days of serving up tater tots and French toast sticks to students. Here are the days of carrot sticks and quinoa.
New nutritional guidelines, announced in 2012, require public school lunchrooms to offer more whole grains, low-fat milk and fewer starchy sides like french fries. But short of stationing grandmothers in every cafeteria, how do you ensure that students actually eat the fruits and veggies they’re being offered?
A minor lunchroom makeover could make a big difference, says Andrew Hanks, a behavioral economist at Cornell University.
In a study published online by The Journal of Pediatrics, Hanks and his colleagues David Just and Brian Wansink, at the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs, demonstrate that small, simple changes in presentation and layout can have a large impact on how â and what â students eat.
Wheel the salad bar into a high-traffic area, for example, and place an attractive fruit basket next to the register. Stock juice popsicles alongside ice cream in the freezer, and have the cafeteria staff gently “up-sell” fruits and vegetables â for example, by asking, “Would you like to try an apple?”
“The whole premise behind this is that, as consumers, we have behavioral biases that lead us to make certain decisions,” Hanks tells The Salt. “If a food is more convenient to reach in a lunch line or store, “we’ll probably take that over a close substitute. If the cookies are easier to reach than the apple, you’re probably going to take the cookie.”
Similar product-placement tactics have proved effective at getting grocery store shoppers to buy more produce. And amid rising childhood obesity rates, there’s been a surge of interest in recent years in applying lessons from behavioral economics to getting kids to make better choices in the lunchroom.
Hanks spent two weeks in New York junior high schools, observing students’ dietary choices before and after what he calls a “smart lunchroom” makeover. The makeover required three hours and cost less than $50.
Standing at the register and near the garbage cans, Hanks counted some 3,700 trays, noting both what students piled on their plates and what they actually consumed. “You’ve got to get your hands dirty, literally,” he says. “Our mantra is, ‘It’s not nutrition until it’s eaten.’ “
In a “smart” lunchroom, the authors found, students were 13 to 23 percent more likely to take a fruit or vegetable, and 10 to 15 percent more likely to eat the whole thing.
“What’s important is that kids are taking things of their own volition,” Hanks says. “It’s going to increase the amount they’re actually eating.”
This is a tactic behavioral economists call “libertarian paternalism,” a term coined in the early aughts by the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Impel students to take boiled spinach by slopping it on their plates, and it’ll be scraped straight into the garbage. Encourage them to take the veggie with a subtle nudge â no ultimatum, no “Because I say so” â and chances are they’ll actually eat it.
“The idea of libertarian paternalism is that we’re not forcing behavior,” says Hanks. “We’re not restricting choices or making kids have carrots on their trays. We’re preserving choice but guiding better behavior.”
Nicola Edwards, a dietitian with California Food Policy Advocates, agrees that the real challenge is motivating students to actually eat the healthful food once it’s on their plates. Edwards is working on an initiative known as Real Eats for Academics and Life, dedicated to making lunches more appealing in Los Angeles school districts. L.A. students, you might recall, made headlines in 2011 for roundly rejecting revamped lunch menus featuring healthful options like quinoa salads.
“Surveys and interviews with students have told us that when something looks like it’s been freshly prepared and not overly packaged, they find it more appealing and are more likely to consume it,” she says.
Edwards also discovered that students are more likely to eat a vegetable if it’s served as an ingredient in an entrée â rather than as a side â and that young children prefer bite-sized apple slices to whole fruit. Such ideas are now getting trial runs in some L.A. schools.
But, Edwards adds, “We also know that change doesn’t happen overnight. Kids aren’t going to go from pizza one day to quinoa the next.”
To that end, Cornell’s Smarter Lunchrooms Movement has pioneered other ways to improve student diet, such as emailing nutrition report cards to mom and dad (“Here’s what your child picked today”), or having students “pre-order” lunch.
“When you go into a lunch line, you’re hungry,” Hanks says. “You have all these smells, these sensory cues â that can lead you to a less healthy choice. But when you’re full from breakfast, it’s like, ‘Hey, I’ll pick the grilled chicken instead of five-cheese pizza.’ “
BRUSSELS |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission proposed more unannounced inspections of food companies and tougher fines for labeling fraud on Monday, after the discovery earlier this year that millions of Europeans ate horsemeat labeled as beef.
If approved by EU governments and lawmakers, the new rules would force member states to impose fines equal to the financial gains from proven cases of food fraud, officials said.
Unidentified criminal gangs blamed for Europe’s horsemeat scandal are believed to have made huge profits by substituting millions of tons of cheap horsemeat for more expensive beef in products including meatballs and lasagne.
EU governments have in the past been reluctant to agree to minimum financial sanctions mandated by Brussels, but the Commission believes the desire to reassure consumers in the wake of the horsemeat scandal could swing the debate.
“Crime must not pay, but if the penalties are low it does pay,” EU consumer commissioner Tonio Borg told a news conference to present the plans.
Penalties for the type of labeling fraud used in the horsemeat scandal vary from state to state. A conviction in Britain may draw a jail term of up to two years, while in France the maximum penalty is a fine of 187,000 euros ($245,000).
The proposals would also force governments for the first time to carry out a minimum number of unannounced inspections on food operators, to check that the contents of their products match what is written on the label.
Europe’s horsemeat scandal broke in January when horse DNA was found in frozen burgers sold in Irish and British supermarkets. ($1 = 0.7624 euros)
(Reporting by Charlie Dunmore; editing by Rex Merrifield)
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Pfizer said it plans to appeal and “immediately seek a re-examination of the opinion” by the European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP).
Shares of Pfizer, which rose 1 percent to close at $30.26 on the New York Stock Exchange, were down 2.7 percent at $29.45 after hours.
The rejection will cut about 3 percent from future earnings per share estimates for the drugmaker, said ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum in a note to investors. He also said “history teaches that the odds are against them,” in terms of the company’s planned appeal.
Pfizer said in a statement that the committee considered that treatment with Xeljanz improved the signs and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and the physical function of patients but did not believe that a consistent reduction in disease activity and structural damage to joints had been sufficiently demonstrated.
The CHMP also raised questions about side effects including serious infections, gastrointestinal perforations and malignancies observed in trials of the pill.
Xeljanz is approved in the United States, Japan and Russia for the treatment of adults with moderate-to-severe active rheumatoid arthritis.
As a twice-daily pill, analysts have said, Xeljanz could prove more attractive to some patients than current drugs such as AbbVie Inc’s $8 billion-a-year Humira, which is given by injection every other week.
Pfizer’s drug works by blocking molecules called Janus kinases, which are linked to joint inflammation.
Rheumatoid arthritis and related diseases have been one of the most lucrative segments for drugmakers, with more than $20 billion in annual sales.
The disease is an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s own immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue, causing inflammation and pain in the joints.
(Reporting by Deena Beasley; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Steve Orlofsky)
Story By: by Julie Rovner
The Obama administration has decided to delay for a year a key piece of the health law that will let small businesses provide a choice of health plans to their workers. It is the first admission that the task of rolling out the law is too complicated to accomplish in the time allowed.
The number of people diagnosed with measles in the outbreak centred on Swansea is already well over 500. But thousands of unvaccinated children are still at risk – and experts fear a child may die.
But concerns over the jab's safety were raised a decade later when disgraced medic Andrew Wakefield published a since discredited paper in The Lancet suggesting MMR was linked with an increased risk of autism.
"MMR rates have gone back up. But what nobody did was immunise those children who didn't get vaccinated when they were due between 1998 and 2008.
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Story By: by Jon Hamilton
Hardcore vaccine skeptics are unlikely to be swayed by the new research. But many worried parents should be, says Ellen Wright Clayton, a professor at Vanderbilt University who helped write a report on vaccine safety for the Institute of Medicine.
“I certainly hope that a carefully conducted study like this will get a lot of play, and that some people will find this convincing,” Clayton says. That would let researchers pursue more important questions, she says.
“The sad part is, by focusing on the question of whether vaccines cause autism spectrum disorders, they’re missing the opportunity to look at what the real causes are,” she says. “It’s not vaccines.”
Autism Speaks, a major advocacy and research group, seems ready to move beyond the vaccine issue. Geraldine Dawson, the group’s top scientist, praised the new study and says the result should clear the way for research on other potential causes of autism.
These include factors like nutrition, which can affect a baby’s brain development in the womb, Dawson says. Other factors could include medications and infections during pregnancy, she says, or an infant’s exposure to pesticides or pollution.
“As we home in on what is causing autism, I think we are going to have fewer and fewer questions about some of these things that don’t appear to be causing autism,” Dawson says.
BEIJING |
BEIJING (Reuters) – China reported four new cases on Tuesday of a strain of bird flu that was previously unknown in humans but has already killed two people, raising the total of known cases to seven.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday there was no evidence that the H7N9 strain could be transmitted between people, but that it was investigating the outbreak.
The four new patients in China’s eastern Jiangsu province were all in critical condition and receiving emergency treatment, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Jiangsu provincial health bureau. A woman in Anghui province who caught the virus in early March is also in critical condition.
No mutual infection was discovered in any of the seven cases, Xinhua said. A group of 255 people identified by authorities to have had close contact with the seven H7N9 victims have also not shown any flu symptoms, it said.
The four patients in Jiangsu – a province next to Shanghai – were aged between 32 and 83 and only one, a woman of 45, had worked in the market slaughtering poultry, Xinhua said.
All four fell ill in mid-March and were hospitalized towards the end of the month. The four had reported varying symptoms of dizziness, fever, cough and breathlessness, Xinhua said.
It said that no vaccines against H7N9 were available in China or abroad.
China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission on Sunday confirmed a Xinhua report that three people had been infected with the new strain.
The two deaths were men in Shanghai aged 87 and 27 who fell sick in late February.
It is not known how the seven victims were infected, though the government believes the virus is not highly contagious.
The WHO said on Monday that the first three cases had shown no evidence of human-to-human transmission, but that there were questions to answer about the source of the infection and the mode of transmission.
China has a checkered record when it comes to dealing with bad news, which is often covered up by officials fearing it may attract unwanted attention from superiors and damage promotion prospects, despite government efforts to enhance transparency.
In 2003, Beijing initially tried to cover up the epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.
Some Chinese have complained that authorities took too long before announcing the deaths on Sunday, though the WHO says the government acted properly.
Wu Fan, chief doctor and director general of the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control, told reporters on Tuesday that the government had acted as quickly as it possibly could.
“In this situation, to take 20 days to identify and confirm a new virus is already considered short,” she said.
“We cannot say for certain or confirm if it was a case of a human catching an avian virus or an avian virus changing and becoming a new human flu virus.”
Ian Jones, a professor of virology at Britain’s University of Reading, said there was no cause for alarm at this stage.
“At the moment I don’t think it’s anything more than an unusual set of isolated cases,” he told Reuters.
He said three types of avian influenza – H5, H7 and H9 – were considered by experts to be a potential threat to humans.
Since there is no evidence to date of human-to-human transmission, or of clusters of cases around those few confirmed so far, he said authorities should be watchful but need not enact emergency measures.
“Of course we need to take account of these cases and follow up the contacts and so on, but I think that’s where it rests at the moment,” Jones said. “It’s far too soon to assume this is the start of something.”
(Reporting by Koh Gui Qing and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Melanie Lee in Shanghai and Kate Kelland in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich)