Four local Chinese officials have been fired for failing to dispose properly of infected pigs amid efforts to stop the spread of a swine-borne disease that has killed 39 people, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Li Mingzhong, chief of the Animal Husbandry and Food Bureau in Sichuan province's Zizhong county, allegedly claimed that carcasses of 78 dead pigs were properly disposed of when they had not been, the China Daily newspaper reported.
The government has ordered stringent anti-disease measures in Sichuan, where 208 people have been stricken since June by an illness blamed on streptococcus suis, a bacteria carried by pigs.
Li and three colleagues were accused of failing to verify that the pigs had been safely buried deep underground and trying to deceive investigators, the China Daily said.
It identified the other officials as Liu Wei, head of the county animal epidemic prevention and supervision station, Jiang Xiaogang, who is deputy chief of the same station and Chen Bin, chief of the animal husbandry and veterinary station in the town of Taiping.
One person infected by the disease died Saturday, bringing the death toll to 39, the worst outbreak in the region in recent years.
The World Health Organization has urged Chinese health authorities to conduct more tests since experts say it is highly unusual for so many people to fall sick and die suddenly from the disease.
Some 208 people have become ill since June in dozens of villages and towns in Sichuan province, a major pig-raising region, according to China's Health Ministry. Most were farmers who butchered or handled sick pigs.
Fifteen people remain in critical condition.
No person-to-person infections have been reported.
Symptoms of the disease include high fever, nausea and vomiting, followed by meningitis, hemorrhaging under the skin, toxic shock and coma in severe cases.
Some patients also suffered organ failure.
Chinese health officials say that the strain is extremely virulent and killed one farmer in as little as two hours.
But they have assured the public the disease was under control.
Beijing was criticized in 2003 for being reticent about sharing information on its first outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged from the country's south and killed nearly 800 people around the globe.
Emergency notices were issued this week by the central government ordering tighter controls on the slaughter and sale of pigs to curb the spread of the streptococcus suis bacteria.
Officials and farmers who fail to obey have been threatened with severe punishment.
News reports last week said some officials were dismissed after failing to enforce a ban on the export of pork from affected areas of Sichuan.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS