August 24, 2004

 

China Confirms Presence Of Bird Flu Virus In Pigs Last Year
 

China has confirmed that a deadly strain of bird flu was found in pigs last year, raising questions about why international health and agriculture officials battling the virus were not alerted.

 

The H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed 27 people in Asia this year, was discovered in pigs as early as 2003, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, citing the agriculture ministry.

 

The official confirmation followed the startling announcement by a respected scientist that H5N1 was discovered in pigs in south-eastern Fujian province in 2003 at a conference last week.

 

The remark by Chen Hualan, director of the China National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory, came as a surprise to World Health Organisation (WHO) representatives present at the seminar, who heard about it for the first time.

 

Miss Chen called the finding "a rather dangerous signal in terms of public health."

 

The ramifications of infection among pigs could be extremely severe, as it could mark the first step of a mutation of the virus into a form that could spread more easily to humans. H5N1 had been found only in poultry until now.

 

While it was suspected to be carried by swine, no cases in pigs had been officially reported, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

 

China has a poor record for openness on public health dangers, highlighted in early 2003 when it had failed for weeks to admit the real extent of the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a highly lethal lung disease.

 

The agriculture ministry, nevertheless, said the appearance of bird flu in pigs had been made public early this year.

 

The finding was published in an article co-authored by Ms Chen in the January issue of the Chinese Journal of Preventive Veterinary Medicine, an academic periodical in Chinese with short abstracts in English.

 

While owning up to the discovery of bird flu in pigs in 2003, the ministry maintained that no similar finding had been made this year.

 

After the lethal H5N1 strain emerged in China in early 2004, the ministry investigated a total of 1.1 million poultry and pork samples. However nothing was found in pigs, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

 

"The result of that investigation was that no pig was found to have H5N1 bird flu virus," the statement said, citing an unnamed official with the ministry's Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine Bureau.