China says steps up watch against bird flu
BEIJING (Reuters) - China is stepping up surveillance efforts over migratory birds and in poultry markets to check the spread of bird flu, a state newspaper said on Monday.
From the country's far north to the booming south, local governments are cancelling pigeon races, stocking up on protective clothing and setting up checkpoints in markets, the China Daily said.
Three areas hit by bird flu in the provinces of Hunan and Anhui and the northern region of Inner Mongolia remained closed to outsiders, the official English-language newspaper said.
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A Chinese health worker sprays disinfectant over chickens in cages at a poultry market in China's capital Beijing October 30, 2005. (REUTERS/Alfred Cheng Jin) |
China reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday the death of a 12-year-old girl who ate a diseased chicken in the southern province of Hunan and caught pneumonia, the newspaper added.
China last week said the girl died of pneumonia, and stressed there had been no human infections of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
China has reported no human bird flu infections since the latest H5N1 outbreak first surfaced in Asia in late 2003. Since then, 62 people have died in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia and the virus has spread to Europe.
The WHO has been pressing China to provide more information on the girl and her 9-year-old brother, who is reported to be in stable condition in hospital, also with pneumonia.
In the past two weeks China has revealed three outbreaks of the H5N1 virus that killed 3,800 chickens, ducks and geese.
Farmers in China, as in many parts of Asia, live alongside their poultry and other livestock, increasing the chances of the disease spreading to humans, experts say. It also raises the chance of the virus mutating into a form that could spread easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die.
Migratory birds, believed to play a role in the transmission of H5N1 to domestic flocks, are now heading south for Africa from Siberia, where outbreaks among poultry have occurred.
In Africa, as in parts of Asia, many households keep backyard flocks, which often mingle freely with wild birds or share play areas with children, WHO said last week.
Most human bird flu infections are due to handling birds sick with the virus or contact with their droppings. Cooked meat is not a known source of infection.
Copyright © 2008 Reuters
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