China Confirms Three Cases of Bird Flu in Humans

November 16, 2005
China Confirms Three Cases of Bird Flu in Humans
By KEITH BRADSHER and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BEIJING, Nov. 16 - China's Ministry of Health today confirmed three human cases of bird flu, including two in central China's Hunan Province and one in east China's Anhui Province. The announcement, which provided no further details, was posted on the Web site of Xinhua, the official news agency, a day after China's Agriculture Ministry said that it would inject all of the nation's 5.2 billion chickens, geese and ducks with a vaccine against bird flu.

That campaign, disclosed by the official New China News Agency, would be the largest single vaccination effort ever for any species, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. It promises to be logistically complicated, not least because it entails chasing and catching billions of free-range birds. The Agriculture Ministry did not provide a timetable.

Dr. Qi Xiaoqiu, the director general of the department for disease prevention and control at China's Health Ministry, said at a news conference on Tuesday that it was "highly probable" that a boy and a girl who suffered high fevers last month - the girl died - had been the country's first human cases of bird flu. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao warned last week that China faces a "very serious situation" as it seeks to control the virus.

At any one time, China has about 4 billion chickens and 1.2 billion ducks and geese, but even those numbers understate the size of the vaccination task. The country consumes about 14 billion domestically grown chickens, ducks and geese every year.

Dr. Qi said that three-fifths of the poultry in China was kept by families, who let the birds and other domesticated animals wander around the neighborhood and the yard and often through the house. Constant close contact between animals and people is worrisome because birds and pigs can carry the H5N1 bird flu virus and may transmit it to people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/international/asia/16cnd-flu.html?ei=5094&en=73c27d4b8e63700c&hp=&ex=1132203600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

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Chinese officials have sought to reassure the public they are doing everything to prevent the disease from spreading among humans. This week, they ordered the vaccination of all of the country's five billion poultry. Authorities in northeastern China's Liaoning province, one of the country's hardest hit, said on Wednesday that 320 million had already been immunized.

The job is gigantic. China has a third of the world's poultry stock, and the country consumes 14 billion ducks, chickens, geese and other birds each year.
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Thats alot of vaccinations!!!