November 10, 2005

China's bird flu a "very serious situation", says Chinese PM
 

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Wednesday that China is facing a "very serious situation" in controlling the spread of bird flu in the country, official state media reported.

The comments signal an increase in concern among China's top officials about the disease and its spread in China, with outbreaks in poultry stocks having been reported in several provinces recently.

Wen said the danger of bird flu spreading still exists in some regions and the disease has yet to be totally controlled, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

There have been no confirmed cases of humans infected with bird flu in China, but outbreaks among poultry have been confirmed in at least four provinces.

Sunday, the Chinese government said it was reopening an investigation into whether bird flu killed a 12-year-old girl and sickened two people last month in cases that originally were ruled not to have been caused by the virus.

China faces "an arduous task" in preventing the spread of the disease from poultry to humans, Wen said according to Xinhua.

Experts are especially worried about the spread of the virus in China because of the scale of its poultry industry and because three major migration routes for wild birds pass over it. Scientists fear wild birds might spread the virus across borders.

Wen made the comments Tuesday during a visit to a bird flu-affected county in north-eastern China's Liaoning Province, Xinhua said. The flu has killed 8,940 chickens in Liaoning province and the government has cordoned off areas affected by the epidemic, state media reported Saturday.

Chinese officials have spoken out about the threat of bird flu and taken some steps to coordinate action with international health authorities, in contrast to the suppression of information that took place during an outbreak of SARS in 2002.

There have been 124 reported cases of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu found in humans worldwide, resulting in 63 deaths as of Nov 7, the WHO said on it website.