MSNBC 1/30/04: Virulent bird flu spreads in China

[Guest guest]

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>Virulent bird flu spreads in China

>China, which has a massive poultry industry, said Friday that the

>deadly bird flu virus has hit three provinces and possibly two more,

>as well as the sprawling financial capital of Shanghai.

>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4034127/

>

 

A worker is sprayed with disinfectant after leaving a quarantined

farm in Dingdang, in China's southern Guangxi province. The farm was

quarantined after ducks there were found infected with bird flu.

 

MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 2:31 p.m. ET Jan. 30, 2004

 

China, which has a massive poultry industry, said Friday that the

deadly bird flu virus has hit three provinces and possibly two more,

as well as the sprawling financial capital of Shanghai.

 

It said tests confirmed the H5N1 virus had infected chickens in Hubei

and Hunan provinces as well as the southern region of Guanxi.

Outbreaks were also suspected in Anhui and Guangdong, the southern

province where SARS originated.

 

There was another suspected outbreak in a suburb of Shanghai and a

mass slaughter of domestic fowl was under way around all three new

outbreaks, the official Xinhua news agency said.

 

WHO: Stockpile antiviral drugs

Also on Friday, the World Health Organization said countries should

consider stockpiling antiviral drugs in case the bird flu striking

Asia's poultry becomes equally contagious among people.

 

Health experts fear that if avian influenza strikes someone suffering

from human flu, the viruses could create a hybrid as deadly as bird

flu and as contagious as human flu. That could cause a deadly global

pandemic, the WHO has warned.

 

Because a bird flu vaccine for humans is many months away, and might

not be widely available at first, countries need to consider stocking

antiviral drugs, Klaus Stohr, WHO's chief flu expert, said.

 

The virus appears to be resistant to two older generic flu drugs,

amantadine and rimantadine. However, the newer flu drugs Tamiflu and

Relenza are expected to work.

 

Fears of a new virus

The bird flu outbreaks in China -- widely condemned for covering up

SARS for several months -- are the nightmare health officials had

prayed they would not have to face.

 

Especially in Guangdong, people live cheek by jowl with their

chickens and other farm animals, raising the possibility the virus

may combine with human flu to produce a strain that could sweep

through a world where people have no immunity to it.

 

Hong Kong, just south of Guangdong, banned imports of live birds and

poultry meat from mainland China on Friday, shortly after the new

outbreaks were reported.

 

So far, all eight people -- seven of them children -- known to have

died from bird flu have caught it directly from infected chickens,

not from infected people.

 

But the generation of a new flu virus that can pass from person to

person is the overwhelming fear, and while the possibility is small,

every new outbreak raises the risk of a pandemic.

 

Progress reported in Thailand

There was, however, better news from Thailand, so far the worst hit

of 10 Asian countries struck by bird flu, which hopes it may be

turning the corner in the war against a disease that has seen

governments accused of cover-ups and incompetence.

 

" I'm confident the cull is nearly finished, " Agriculture Minister

Somsak Thepsuthin told reporters at Bangkok's Chatuchak market, the

world's biggest, where infected fighting cockerels were found this

week.

 

" On Sunday, we should have some good news. We'll rub out areas which

have been red areas, " he added, referring to zones around outbreaks.

 

But the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said mass slaughters,

which it maintains are the most effective way of stamping the virus

out and preventing a human flu pandemic, were not happening fast

enough.

 

 

Senior FAO official Hans Wagner said in a statement that although

more than 25 million birds had been killed, it was " concerned that

mass cullings are not taking place at a speed we consider absolutely

necessary to contain the virus H5N1. "

 

Nor were some governments doing enough to convince small farmers,

many looking at the destruction of their livelihoods and hiding their

stock, of the need to cull.

 

" As long as small farmers and commercial producers, especially in

poorer countries, do not receive an adequate financial incentive for

killing their chickens, they will probably not apply suggested

emergency measures, " Wagner said.

 

" There is a real threat that the virus may linger on in poorer

countries which are without adequate resources to apply control

measures. "

 

More outbreaks than reported

The WHO said it was possible there were more outbreaks than had been

reported due to weak surveillance.

 

" If your system is not strong enough to identify that chickens and

ducks are dying, then you still have a problem, " WHO representative

in China Hank Bekedam said on Friday.

 

The WHO also was concerned that Chinese farmers were culling poultry

in an irresponsible manner, failing to wear protective gear and

goggles, " he said.

 

But where and when the H5N1 avian flu virus first appeared is still a

mystery, at least to the public.

 

Geneva-based WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said samples taken " several

months ago " in a country he would not name proved to be the H5N1

virus.

 

" The country where it occurred didn't have the capacity to determine

whether it was H5N1, " he said.

 

The WHO said on its Web site at www.who.int test results from

countries which have the disease indicated the virus " has been

circulating in parts of Asia for longer than presumed. "

 

But, it said, these studies did not point to where it had originated.

 

China vehemently denied suggestions in the British weekly New

Scientist magazine that it was the source.

 

And another mystery still lingers. The WHO has asked Beijing for

further clarification on a baffling case of bird flu that killed a

Hong Kong man and infected his family after a visit to China a year

ago. The man died and his son fell sick with the H5N1 strain in early

2003 in Hong Kong after returning from a visit to Guangdong and the

neighbouring province of Fujian.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report

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