Another bird flu outbreak in China

Oct 4 2006

China's Ministry of Agriculture says scientists have confirmed an outbreak of bird flu has killed 1,000 domestic poultry in a village in China's northwest.

The news comes just one day after another reported outbreak in a neighbouring region.

Nearly 1,000 chickens and ducks reportedly died suddenly in a poultry farm in Xincheng Village of Jiuyuan District of Baotou City last week and as a result authorities have quarantined the infected area along with the farmer and his wife and anyone who had close contact with them.

The farmer had apparently bought some 5,400 chickens and ducks between August 21 and September 20 from other parts of the country by September 20 more than 70 chickens and ducks were dead.

The outbreak was only reported last week when the death toll amongst the poultry had risen to almost 1000.

Bird flu vaccines have been sent to the village and all poultry in Jiuyuan District will be inoculated in the coming 10 days.

Investigations are being conducted to find where the chickens and ducks were bought and where they were sold.

Poultry near Yinchuan, the capital of the Ningxia region, were killed by the H5N1 avian flu virus, and another 72,930 birds have been culled in an attempt to stop the virus spreading.

Authorities are insisting the outbreak has been effectively controlled, and 17,616 chickens and ducks have been culled to control the outbreak and authorities have banned the movement of poultry from the area in Inner Mongolia, a region neighbouring Ningxia.

The H5N1 virus is endemic in many parts of Asia and has spread through much of Asia's poultry flocks and infected large numbers of wild birds, particularly water fowl, which are often carriers of the virus.

Since late 2003 bird flu has spread to Europe, Africa and South Asia, killing at least 148 people worldwide since late 2003, and millions of birds have either died or been culled.

There is the ever present fear that the virus could mutate into a form that could pass easily from person to person, sparking a global pandemic.

China is at the epicentre of the fight against bird flu because like Indonesia and many other Asian countries, it has millions of backyard birds roaming free; it also has the world's largest poultry population.

China has to date had 21 reported human cases, including 14 deaths, from the virus and dozens of outbreaks in birds that have led to the culling of millions of fowl.

China has reported nine outbreaks of bird flu in poultry this year, in the northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, north China's Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia, east China's Anhui Province, the southwestern Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and the central province of Hunan.