April 18, 2006

Local official denies report of bird flu in eastern China

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper reported Tuesday (Apr 18) that health workers culled about 8,000 chickens at a poultry farm in Shandong's Rizhuang County over the weekend.

It said the culling followed the deaths from disease of more than 400 chickens at the farm last week. The area is about 500 kilometres (310 miles) south-east of the capital, Beijing.

Calls to the Shandong provincial Agriculture Bureau were unanswered.

A local Chinese official denied the incident.

The official, contacted by phone at the Rizhuang county government, said his office had received no word of any bird disease outbreak in the area.

"It's impossible that something like this could have happened and we weren't told," the official said.

A World Health Organization spokeswoman, Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, said a request for more information about the newspaper report had been filed with China's Health Ministry.

The Chinese mainland has reported 16 human cases of bird flu since November, with 11 fatalities.

The H5N1 virus has killed 109 people in nine countries, mostly in Asia, according to the WHO, and has killed or prompted authorities to destroy 200 million birds.