China confirms its first human bird

英语自学网

China reported its first human cases of bird flu on the mainland Wednesday, including at least one fatality, as health workers armed with vaccine and disinfectant raced to inoculate billions of chickens and other poultry in a massive campaign to contain the virus.
         
        　　The World Health Organization confirmed the virulent strain that experts fear could cause a worldwide flu pandemic has now infected humans in the world's most populous nation.
         
        　　"This is a psychologically telling moment for a country that has never had bird flu cases in the past in humans," said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing. "This will drive home to citizens across the country that this can happen in our own backyards," he said. "It's a very real threat."
         
        　　Nine-year-old He Junyao, from Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, is interviewed by local media. The boy has recovered from a bird flu infection. [Reuters]China's Health Ministry reported confirmed cases of infection with the deadly H5N1 strain in a poultry worker, who died, and a 9-year-old boy, who fell ill in central Hunan province but recovered, the Xinhua News Agency said. It said the boy's 12-year-old sister, who died, was recorded as a suspected case.
         
        　　Chinese officials initially said the 12-year-old girl who died in Hunan tested negative for the virus, as did her brother and a schoolteacher who fell ill at the same time. But the government later asked WHO to help re-examine the case.
         
        　　Wadia said Chinese investigators were confident the girl died of bird flu, but she couldn't be considered a confirmed case under WHO guidelines because her body was cremated and there weren't adequate samples for testing.
         
        　　The 24-year-old poultry worker died in the eastern province of Anhui, where there was an outbreak last month. But Wadia said the victim didn't live near that site and instead had contact with birds that died in her own village.
         
        　　"She died in a hospital," he said. "She was therefore tested adequately."
         
        　　Experts worry the virus could spread and mutate in China due to its huge poultry flocks and their contact with humans. It also has migration routes for geese and other wild birds that might carry the disease.
         
        　　Villagers watch as health workers spray disinfectant in Heishan County of Northeast China's Liaoning Province yesterday. The province has reported four bird flu outbreaks since last month, including one in Heishan. [Reuters]
         
        　　Officials had warned a human infection in China was inevitable after the country suffered 11 outbreaks in poultry over the past month, which prompted authorities to destroy millions of birds.
         
        　　Elsewhere in Asia, the H5N1 strain has infected at least 126 people and killed at least 64 of them since 2003, two-thirds of them in Vietnam.
         
        　　Nevertheless, WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng in Geneva said the Chinese cases do not increase the risk of a flu pandemic because there has been no observed genetic change in the virus and no apparent spread between people.
         
        　　She said it would not be surprising if more human bird flu cases are confirmed in China. "There are a lot of chickens infected and there's a lot of contact between humans and chickens in China," she said.
         
        　　The Chinese government announced plans Tuesday to vaccinate all the country's 14 billion domestic fowl.
         
        　　It wasn't clear how long that would take. According to Chinese health officials, vaccinating chickens can require repeated injections and booster shots. State television showed workers at industrial-scale poultry farms jabbing chickens with injector guns.
         
        　　Health experts in Geneva said shots were the most reliable way to deliver vaccine, although it can also be administered by mixing it in the animals' feed.
         
        　　Officials in Liaoning in China's northeast, scene of four outbreaks, said they have finished a vaccination program begun this month for the province's 320 million birds.
         
        　　Such vaccination programs are "the right thing to do," said David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator for bird and human flu. The virus is so entrenched in China's birds that simply slaughtering them will not work, he said. The best plan is to vaccinate and then slaughter when there are outbreaks, he said at a conference on bird flu in New York.
         
        　　The Chinese territory of Hong Kong recorded the first known cases of human infection with H5N1 bird flu in 1997, when it infected 18 people and killed six, according to WHO. The entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds was slaughtered.
         
        　　In Liaoning, officials took reporters Wednesday to the village of Qitaizi in an effort to reassure the public by showing off anti-disease work.
         
        　　Officials destroyed 160,000 chickens in the village after 40 were found dead of bird flu on Nov. 4.
         
        　　"Obviously there's no way we can kill all the migratory birds," said Shao Chuanming of the provincial animal health bureau. "But as long as we can sever the links of transmission between migratory birds, poultry and people, then the controls are effective."
         
        　　Financial incentives offered to boost fight
         
        　　Also Wednesday, China decided to offer financial incentives to poultry businesses to help them cope better and boost the fight against bird flu.
         
        　　Poultry processing and marketing businesses will be exempted from corporate tax and enjoy tax rebates this year, according to a meeting of the State Council China's cabinet presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.
         
        　　The poultry industry will also enjoy reduction or exemption of land-use, real-estate and vehicle taxes during the first half of 2006.
         
        　　These decisions were among the nine measures adopted to check the spread of bird flu.
         
        　　The meeting passed a draft regulation on emergency response to a serious animal epidemic.
         
        　　It outlined measures, including preparation, monitoring, reporting and announcement and legal liabilities of governments, businesses and individuals in an epidemic outbreak.
         
        　　The government also promised subsidies for vaccinating and culling poultry in outbreak areas and to foot the bill of vaccines.
         
        　　All compulsory injections of vaccine against bird flu will be free.
         
        　　Banks have been ordered to extend the loan payment periods of major poultry businesses and not penalize those who default on repayments during the bird flu outbreaks.
         
        　　Employees laid off by affected businesses will enjoy unemployment insurance or subsistence allowances of urban residents.
         
        　　The meeting also called for more efforts to change the current household poultry-breeding pattern to a collective model for better control.
         
        　　Health experts have repeatedly warned human infections would be inevitable if China cannot stop more poultry epidemics.
         
        　　Also Wednesday, Vietnamese authorities reported bird flu outbreaks in three more provinces, bringing to 12 the number of cities and provinces affected recently. Vietnam is in the middle of a campaign to destroy all poultry in most of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, its two biggest cities.
         
        　　Ministers at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, urged more information-sharing and response systems to combat bird flu. "New global pandemics, like avian influenza, require new, concerted action," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.