February 3, 2004

 

 

WHO Experts To Help China Contain Bird Flu

 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sent two experts from Netherlands to Beijing to help China contain the bird flu spread across the country.

 

The experts will offer advice on safe culling of poultry and other issues, including the assessment of the monitoring system and animal vaccination, said World Health Organisation spokesman Roy Wadia.

 

He did not release the experts' names, but said these experts had recently assisted the authorities in Vietnam as the country grappled with its own outbreak of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza.

 

"Their expertise was also utilised during the Netherlands' outbreak of H7N7 avian influenza in 2003," he said.

 

"The WHO is in the process of identifying more international experts across a range of disciplines so as to form a joint mission with the Chinese side."

 

He declined to say when the joint mission would be set up.

 

Meanwhile, a chicken culling in the remote north-west has triggered fears that the virus may be spreading further.

 

Beginning at dawn, officials in Anning district, part of destitute Gansu province, started killing thousands of chickens within a 3km radius of a farm where poultry started dying mysteriously last week.

 

"So far, it's only a suspected case," said an official with the Gansu health department's disease control section.

 

Mr Xue Yiren, an expert with the Gansu animal quarantine authority, also characterised it as a suspected outbreak. He said a sample had been sent to a laboratory outside the province for tests.

 

Gansu borders the vast Xinjiang region, which is among the growing number of areas with suspected outbreaks, suggesting that far larger parts of the country than previously reported might have been hit.

 

Despite the comments from local officials, Gansu had not yet been added to the list of affected areas late yesterday. That list has a total of 14 confirmed and suspected outbreaks affecting 10 out of China's 31 provinces and regions.

 

In China's largest city, Shanghai, where an outbreak was reported last week, officials have banned the wholesale and retailing of live poultry at local markets and urged sellers to ensure that birds carry quarantine certificates.

 

Near the site of the possible outbreak in Nanhui district, 50km from downtown Shanghai, officials covered in protective gear sprayed trucks with disinfectant and ensured no one smuggled out chickens.

 

Officials in east China's Shandong province, which accounts for half of China's poultry exports, have kicked off a campaign to vaccinate all chickens, a local official said.