November 7, 2005

 

China destroys 6 million poultry in latest bird flu outbreak

 

 

China has destroyed 6 million poultry near the site of its latest bird flu outbreak, while officials investigated whether the virus caused the death of a 12-year-old girl and two illnesses in another province, state media said Monday.

 

Also Monday, authorities closed all of Beijing's 168 live poultry markets as a precaution against the possible spread of the virus in the Chinese capital, state television reported.

 

China has had no confirmed human infections from the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu in its latest round of outbreaks.

 

However, it has imposed increasingly strict measures following warnings that a human case was inevitable, if China could not stop outbreaks among its 5.2 billion chickens, ducks and other poultry.

 

Experts were especially worried about China because of the vast scale of its poultry industry and because it was a major migration route for wild birds, which scientists said might spread the virus.

 

Specialists worried that the H5N1 virus could mutate into a strain that could spread easily from person to person, setting off a pandemic that could kill millions.

 

The virus has killed at least 62 people across Southeast Asia.

 

In Liaoning province, east of Beijing, authorities have destroyed 6 million poultry in 15 villages near the site of an outbreak that killed 8,940 chickens, the Xinhua News Agency said.

 

The culling was unusually large by Chinese standards, but Xinhua said it was carried out because of rules requiring the destruction of all birds within three kilometres of an infection site.

 

Armed police and health workers in protective suits were guarding the villages, the China Daily newspaper said.

 

Employees who answered the phone in local health offices in Liaoning said they were not allowed to release any further information.

 

China has reported four bird flu outbreaks in poultry since Oct 14.

 

Meanwhile, Japan was mulling a JPY300 million donation to WHO to help combat bird flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing government officials it did not name.

 

North Korea announced it was taking measures to prevent an outbreak.

 

Ministries have intensified quarantine at ports and airports, the official Korean Central News Agency said. Chicken farms were also barring visitors from entering and were sterilising coops and vehicles, the agency said.

 

And in a policy aimed at preventing an outbreak of the disease in Hong Kong, the territory's government announced it would fine people HK$1,500 for feeding pigeons at public housing buildings.