China closes poultry markets, factories

Police officers in protective suits disinfect and close down a duck farm where suspected cases of bird flu were spotted in Jieyang, in China's Guangdong province on Saturday. PHOTO: AP

China has ordered poultry markets and processing factories closed in bird flu affected areas, state media said yesterday, shortly after the World Health Organization warned Beijing's chance to contain the disease may be disappearing.

Bird flu has killed millions of chickens in 10 Asian countries, and jumped to humans in at least two of them, killing at least 10 people believed to have had direct contact with sick birds.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization appealed for international aid to provide farmers across Asia with compensation, saying otherwise they may resist slaughtering their flocks, a crucial measure in stamping out the disease and preventing a human outbreak.

"We are ... concerned that mass culling is not taking place at a speed we consider absolutely necessary to contain the virus," said Hans Wagner, an animal production and health officer at FAO.

The WHO called on China to share more information about the disease, step up monitoring for possible human cases and take precautions so that workers engaged in the mass slaughter of birds aren't accidentally infected.

The appeal came after the government on Friday announced confirmed cases in two central provinces, Hunan and Hubei. It said it was investigating suspected cases in three other regions, including Guangdong in the south, where SARS is believed to have begun.

China's Guangzhou Daily newspaper said yesterday that officials will monitor processing plants to make sure "poultry from areas where the epidemic has hit are not allowed to be processed and sold."

Poultry markets in affected areas have also been closed down "as more bird flu cases were spotted across China," the official Xinhua News Agency said without elaborating.

"We have repeatedly said there is a brief window of opportunity to act within China," Dr. Julie Hall, a WHO official in Beijing, said in a statement. "This latest news strongly suggests that the window is getting smaller with each passing day."

The UN health agency, however, welcomed tests showing that bird flu has been in Asia since at least April, saying they were reassured that despite having many more months of opportunity than originally believed, the virus has not succeeded in infecting humans on a large scale.

Efforts to stamp out the disease are partly aimed at heading off a global human flu pandemic, which could be triggered if the avian virus gets into humans and mixes with a normal human flu virus, creating a potent hybrid. Experts say it is a question of when, not if, another pandemic will occur.

Scientists warn that pigs may also play a role in helping flu jump from birds into humans. Pigs have been implicated in human flu epidemics of the past. They are often housed with poultry in traditional family farms in Asia and are genetically more similar to humans than birds are.

"Pigs can be a mixing bowl of chicken viruses and human viruses. I wouldn't exclude the pig yet from the whole thing," said John Oxford, a flu expert from Queen Mary School of Medicine in London.

The epidemic has struck Asia's economies hard, with tens of millions of chickens killed by the virus or destroyed to prevent its spread, and governments are keen to restore public confidence.

Governments battling the disease are: China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Taiwan and Pakistan. However, the strain of bird flu striking Taiwan and Pakistan is different from the one hitting the other countries and is not considered a serious threat to humans.

Singapore has no known bird flu nor does its closest neighbor Malaysia -- but that hasn't stopped the city-state from gearing up to cull 250 healthy chickens on a tiny island in fear they could become infected with the disease striking poultry stocks across Asia, said Goh Shih Yong, a spokesman for the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.

Singapore is on high alert for bird flu after SARS, the last new disease to sweep through Asia, killed 33 people here and did massive damage to the nation's economy.