Hong Kong hospitals were on the lookout yesterday for a mystery illness that has killed nine people in China's southern Sichuan province.
Twenty people were hospitalized with the unknown disease from June 24 to July 21 in the city of Ziyang, the Hong Kong government said Saturday, citing information from Sichuan officials.
Nine died, one was discharged and 10 are still in the hospital, including six in critical condition, according to the Hong Kong government. World Health Organization spokesman Bob Dietz said the cases may be linked to farmers who have slaughtered either pigs or sheep. He said the Chinese government has dispatched a team to investigate.
PHOTO: AP
The Chinese news Web site Sina.com reported Saturday the people infected suffered from symptoms like fever, lack of energy, vomiting, bleeding from blood vessels beneath the skin, and shock. Dietz said the disease doesn't appear to be spreading.
Hong Kong's Hospital Authority has asked its hospitals to notify health authorities of any patients with similar symptoms, spokesman Raymond Lo said yesterday.
Hong Kong is wary of diseases spreading here from China since severe acute respiratory syndrome was brought to the territory by a Mainlander in 2003.
The disease eventually killed 299 people in Hong Kong.
pigs destroyed
Meanwhile, Indonesia became the first known country yesterday to destroy pigs in its effort to contain the rapid spread of bird flu, which has killed at least 57 people across Asia and devastated poultry stocks.
Plans to slaughter 200 swine, however, were sharply reduced as authorities wrangled over the best way to battle the deadly disease.
Eighteen pigs that tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus were killed on two farms on the outskirts of Jakarta. After being injected with drugs that rendered them unconscious, they were loaded onto trucks, taken to a field and thrown into a fire.
Healthy animals escaped the culls, despite Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono's earlier pledge to kill all birds and pigs on farms hit by the deadly avian influenza.
"If we kill all, healthy and sick, it guarantees nothing because the virus can be spread in the air," he told reporters at an event that appeared to be orchestrated largely for television cameras. "We only want to kill those that are infected."
The farms targeted yesterday were 15km from the home of three family members who earlier this month became the first people in Indonesia to die of bird flu, a 38-year-old foreign ministry worker and his two daughters, 9 and 1.
Authorities still do not know where they contracted the disease -- they had no known contact with birds -- but decided to start with the closest point of infection, Tangerang.
`a mixing bowl'
Apriyantono said farmers who lost pigs to the government's culling campaign would be compensated, most of them with cows.
In May, an Indonesian scientist said he found H5N1 in blood samples taken from pigs, which are genetically similar to people and often carry the human influenza virus, findings that were somewhat controversial.
Experts worry that pigs infected with both bird flu and its human equivalent could act as a "mixing bowl," resulting in a more dangerous, mutant virus that might spread to people more easily -- and from person to person.
Preparing for the worst, Indonesia's health ministry warned last week that 44 hospitals nationwide had been put on alert to receive and treat bird flu patients.
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to
RSS