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China to vaccinate all of its birds

China's top veterinary official said yesterday that the government plans to vaccinate all of the country's 14 billion poultry against bird flu.

"China is in the process of vaccinating all the poultry in the country," said Jia Youling, the Agriculture Ministry's chief veterinary officer.

All fees will be covered by the government, said Jia, who was answering questions about bird flu on the Internet.

He did not give any more details on the vaccinations.

China has more than 14 billion farm poultry, accounting for almost 21 percent of the world's total.

It has suffered nine outbreaks of bird flu in a month in almost every part of the country, including Inner Mongolia and Liaoning province in the north, Anhui province in the east and Hunan and Hubei in central China. Earlier this year, outbreaks were also reported in the far western regions of Xinjiang and Qinghai.

While it has not reported a human case of the disease, experts warn that it is inevitable if the Chinese government cannot stop repeated outbreaks in poultry.

Also yesterday, World Health Organization experts were visiting a bird flu-infected village in central China to help investigate why a 12-year-old girl died and two others were sickened.

The team from Beijing was going to Wangtan, a village in Hunan province, where the government says 545 chickens and ducks died of bird flu last month, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

They will also visit the Hunan Provincial Children's Hospital, where the 12-year-old girl and her brother were treated for pneumonia symptoms, it said.

The girl died on Oct. 17 with a high fever, while the nine-year-old boy was released last weekend. A 36-year-old school teacher was still hospitalized but was said to be recovering.

Health officials said they initially tested negative for H5N1, but have reopened the case and asked the WHO to help.

The WHO team will "look into any gaps that remain," said Roy Wadia, a WHO spokesman in Beijing.

"They will go back in time and review all the steps that have been taken, see if anything has been excluded or if any information that has been collected and not recognized as important," Wadia said. "They're piecing together the whole puzzle and trying to reach a conclusion."

The visit comes one day after Anhui province in the east announced its second outbreak in poultry.

Meanwhile, officials in Xinjiang were investigating suspected bird flu outbreaks in Urumqi and Zepu counties, according to Ta Kung Pao, Hong Kong's pro-Beijing newspaper.

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