China to use police in fighting bird flu

China which has had 17 outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu since the middle of last month, is struggling to control the virus which has now been found in seven provinces over a wide ranging area.

Health officials have now unveiled new rules to combat bird flu and are threatening fines and police action against people who do not cooperate.

Vice Agriculture Minister Yin Chengjie says that although some cases in affected areas have been controlled effectively, the situation on the whole is still severe.

According to Yin some 21 million poultry have been culled so far this year, and billions of birds will be vaccinated in an effort to contain the disease.

The new measures mean that bird flu outbreaks must be reported to the State Council, or cabinet, within four hours of being discovered by regional governments, and fines of up to 5,000 yuan can be levied for obstructing prevention work or refusing to comply.

Yin says that any practices which affect the reporting of epidemic diseases, including deception, false or late reporting, are forbidden, and if needed, the police and even the army may be called in.

Officials are threatened with demotion or the sack for not reporting outbreaks.

China has also stepped up quarantine measures and even North Korea says it is tightening border controls to stop bird flu.

Cao Kangtai, head of the State Council's laws and regulations office, says China is a large country, and there have been some places where there has been a lack of compliance, and only by taking such severe measures can it be guaranteed the prevention work has been carried out.

China has been severely criticized in the past for underplaying SARS, which started in southern China in 2003, then spread to Hong Kong, the rest of Asia and North America, killing hundreds of people.

Now Beijing is pledging a new openness in dealing with bird flu.

To date the lethal strain of the bird flu virus, H5N1, has killed 67 of the 130 people it has infected in Asia since 2003, mainly in Vietnam and Thailand, but it has not as yet shown that it can spread easily among people.

Last week China confirmed two more human cases of bird flu, one of which resulted in a death.

Another death was reported as being highly likely due to bird flu, but is not as yet confirmed.

It is reported that China also plans to set up a string of new monitoring stations in rural areas to help fight bird flu.

The majority of the 198 existing surveillance offices are based in the big cities, but all of China's human infections to date have been in rural areas, says the office of Health Emergency at the Health Ministry.

Early this week the country reported two new outbreaks of the disease in birds, and said four affected provinces and the capital, Beijing, had tightened preventative measures.