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New bird flu cases found in Hubei, Hunan
By (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-01-30 23:52 The Ministry of Agriculture confirmed two new
cases of bird flu Friday and said suspected cases were spotted in three other
areas.
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A medical worker sprays disinfectant to prevent the
spread of the bird flu virus, near a chicken farm in Anlong,
Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomus Region, after discovering the
country's first bird flu case.
[newsphoto]
| The National Bird Flu Laboratory
said the confirmed cases were located in the city of Wuxue in Hubei Province as
well as in Wugang in Hunan Province.
Since the discovery of avian flu in China, local governments have enforced
sweeping poultry culling and prompt quarantine measures.
To date, the situation where the two new cases were confirmed is under
control, said a report from the disease prevention agency.
The new suspected cases, meanwhile, were found in East China's Shanghai,
Guangde county and Ma'anshan city in Anhui Province, and in Jiedong county in
South China's Guangdong Province.
There, authorities have also undertaken the slaughter of poultry and birds
affected are under observation at relevant agencies.
Wang Longde, vice-minister of Public Health confirmed on Friday that no bird
flu infections in human have so far been found on the Chinese mainland.
"People who were in close contact with infected poultry have undergone
meticulous medical examination and observation, but no human infections have
been spotted," he said.
Local health authorities were asked to report immediately to the Ministry of
Public Health if human infections of bird flu were discovered and to take rigid
measures to minimize the spread of the disease, Wang said.
Also yesterday, the State Council, China's Cabinet, decided to set up a
national command centre to battle bird flu and named Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu to
run it. The move came a day after Premier Wen Jiabao issued an eight-point
directive instructing agencies to deal with the problem aggressively.
Following reports of ducks dying on a farm in Dingdang town, Long'an county
in Guangxi, last Friday, the local government culled 14,000 birds within a
three-kilometre radius of the duck farm, and vaccinated all poultry within five
kilometres.
Inspection teams, jointly dispatched by the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry
of Public Health,the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection
and Quarantine, have gone to the bird flu-affected areas in an effort to inspect
the local prevention and control work.
The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Public Health have reported
those new suspected cases to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the
United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the relevant
departments in Hong Kong and Macao.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman from the WHO announced on Friday that they had
discovered the H5N1 virus, as avian flu is also known, in samples drawn last
April and these samples were from outside China.
But she said she is not sure whether the virus found in samples was the same
as the one now affecting Asia, the spokeswoman was quoted as saying by Roy
Wadia, an official with the WHO office in China.
Wadia also told China Daily that the vaccines against bird flu for human
beings won't be ready to be produced in batches until six months from now.
But the vaccination of poultry could effectively help control the spread of
bird flu, said Liu Yuehuan, an expert from the Beijing Academy of Agriculture
and Forestry Sciences.
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