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Metropolis Reality Forums Ť China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry ť

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   China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry

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Topic: China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry (Read 193 times)

yesteach
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China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry
« on: Nov 15^th, 2005, 11:07pm »

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For some reason I just found this intriguing... just exactly HOW do they plan to find all these birds??
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November 16, 2005
China to Vaccinate All Its Poultry
By KEITH BRADSHER and ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BEIJING, Nov. 15 - China's Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday that it would inject all of the nation's 5.2 billion chickens, geese and ducks with a vaccine against bird flu.

The 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.

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 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 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.

"People raise pigs and people keep birds just like Americans keep dogs," Dr. Qi said. "Those pigs and birds are part of the family. It is a kind of self-sufficient, outmoded production method."

Dr. Qi also said 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.

Dr. Qi and Roy Wadia, a World Health Organization spokesman here, said there had been no sign yet of human-to-human transmission of bird flu, a critical ability the virus needs to develop if it is ever to cause a human pandemic.

In an interview at the same conference at which Dr. Qi spoke, an American official who insisted on anonymity said before the Chinese announcement that migratory birds were likely to spread flu to poultry in the United States at some point.

Kristen Scuderi, the Agriculture Department's deputy press secretary, said the United States had 40 million doses of bird vaccine in stock and another 30 million doses in production, which would be used to create a barrier zone around an area with a severe outbreak. "The initial response is culling, but if the outbreak was really egregious we might go into the stockpile," she said. Some outbreaks have resulted in the deaths of millions of birds.

China reported 50 outbreaks of bird flu in 16 provinces last year, and has reported 11 more to international health agencies this autumn, including 2 more small outbreaks reported on Tuesday. Poultry infections have been especially severe this autumn in Liaoning Province.

The official New China News Agency reported last week that a fake flu vaccine, possibly including active virus, may have actually spread the disease instead of preventing it, although there has been no suggestion that this occurred elsewhere.

"The harm is incalculable," said Jia Youling, the chief of the veterinary department at China's agriculture ministry, according to the news agency.

China has also developed its own version of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug, and is preparing to produce it in large quantities if a human pandemic occurs, official news media said. There is no human vaccine against bird flu because it is impossible to predict the form the virus will take if it develops the capacity for human-to-human transmission.

Veterinary experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization's headquarters in Rome said that more information was needed to assess the wisdom of China's decision to vaccinate all poultry.

"With the recent multiplication of outbreaks in China they have now decided on countrywide vaccination, but at this point we cannot say if such a massive program is either possible or advisable," said Joseph Domenech, chief of Veterinary Services. He added that if any country can carry out such a program, "China can do it."

Bird vaccination campaigns involve a huge amount of manpower because the animals must be injected one by one. The Food and Agriculture Organization normally recommends such large-scale programs only in areas where the H5N1 bird flu virus has become endemic - places where it persists in the environment and where culls and quarantines have proved ineffective.

Parts of Vietnam and Indonesia fall into this category, and widespread vaccination programs have controlled flu among poultry in some areas. Dr. Domenech said he had seen no evidence that this was true for all of China.

Bird vaccine has been widely available for several years. Costing merely 10 cents a dose and produced by a dozen manufacturers, it is nearly 100 percent effective. China's Agriculture Ministry said Tuesday that it was producing 100 million doses a day, a figure that Dr. Domenech said was plausible.

The difficulty with the bird vaccine, particularly in Asia, is organizational: Veterinary workers must go village to village and door to door, since most poultry in this part of the world is kept on small farms and in backyards.

In most parts of Asia, the vaccine is administered in endemic areas and in areas surrounding outbreaks that have been controlled by culls. The vaccine is also given to poultry in areas where wild birds are known to be infected.

The Chinese have given no indication that H5N1 virus is widespread in their country, and have said that all outbreaks this autumn have been brought under control.

The vaccine is not recommended for use in birds in Europe or North America, as bird flu is still rare in Europe and has not been seen at all in the United States. In such places, the preferred method for stamping out the disease is culling birds for a radius of up to a few miles around the outbreak and quarantining poultry in a wider area for several weeks.

"The vaccine may be appropriate in Asia, but our first response would definitely be culls and quarantines," said Philip Tod, spokesman for the European Union's health department.

In the last month, Europe has experienced its first outbreaks - in Turkey, Romania and Croatia. All have been controlled in this manner. Mr. Tod said no European governments are currently stockpiling vaccines because they can be produced relatively easily and quickly.

« Last Edit: Nov 15^th, 2005, 11:08pm by yesteach »

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There are only 10 types of people in the world... those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Rhune
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Re: China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry
« Reply #1 on: Nov 16^th, 2005, 11:32am »

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Well, I'm not sure it will work, but more power to them.

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AoM
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Re: China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry
« Reply #2 on: Nov 17^th, 2005, 8:19am »

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It won't work, but with any luck it will slow the problem down enough for us to get a handle on it and think of viable solutions for WHEN (not if) it becomes a global pandemic

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Pocket
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Re: China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry
« Reply #3 on: Nov 17^th, 2005, 8:33am »

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They have to start somewhere. I give them credit for trying to control this thing, and hope it does work.

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Rhune
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Re: China to Vaccinate ALL it's Poultry
« Reply #4 on: Nov 17^th, 2005, 1:23pm »

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Bird flu crisis escalates in China

ANHUI, China (AFP) - China was struggling to contain an escalation of the bird flu crisis after reporting at least one person had died from the H5N1 virus, with other human cases suspected and two more outbreaks.

The Ministry of Agriculture reported on Thursday two new outbreaks of bird flu, one in Xinjiang in the far northwest and the other in the central province of Hubei.

The latest reports bring to 13 the number of outbreaks, across six provinces and regions, confirmed in China over the past month.

The fresh outbreaks followed confirmation on Wednesday night of the nation's first known human cases of bird flu.

The Health Ministry said the virus had killed one woman, likely claimed the life of another girl and infected one boy who has since recovered.

The ministry said a 24-year-old female poultry worker from the eastern province of Anhui, Zhou Maoya, died of bird flu on November 10 after falling ill on November 1.

A 12-year-old girl, He Yin, from an infected area in neighbouring Hunan province who died on October 17 was also "suspected" to have been a victim of H5N1, the ministry said.

The ministry said that, according to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, He's case could not be definitively confirmed as bird flu because reliable laboratory samples were not available.

However the ministry said He's brother, He Junyao, nine, was infected with bird flu. The boy has since recovered and was discharged from hospital last week.

Health authorities said the siblings fell ill shortly after eating a chicken that had died suddenly.

The WHO, which sent an investigation team to the family's village, confirmed the findings and said more human cases were likely in China, although not a huge number.

"That's always of course possible...as long as there are poultry outbreaks, people will be exposed to the virus. You can expect that people might get infected," WHO's China head, Henk Bekedam, told reporters in Beijing.

"On the other hand, I would like to stress...the current virus is not easily transmittable to humans. We don't expect a large number of cases."

Other cases of H5N1 crossing from birds into humans in China were also being investigated on Thursday.

In northeastern Liaoning province, a poultry farmer who had contracted pneumonia after coming into contact with dead chickens was being investigated despite initially testing negative for the virus and making a recovery.

Confirmation of human infections and fatalities in the world's most populous nation has raised the stakes for Chinese and global health authorities in battling the virus.

More than 60 people have already died of the H5N1 strain in Southeast Asia since 2003, with most of the deaths in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.

Although human-to-human transmission has not yet been proved, scientists warn that continued contact between infected birds and humans might result in the virus mutating into a form that could be easily passed on between people.

China has the world's biggest poultry industry, with billion of chickens existing in cramped conditions and close to humans, especially in rural areas.

Adding to the danger is that three of the world's major bird migratory routes pass through China. Migratory birds are regarded as the main carriers of the virus around the world.

Japan expressed concern on Thursday at the developments in its Asian neighbour.

"I'm very worried that it may be a sign of bird flu spreading further," Chief Cabinet Secretary and government spokesman Shinzo Abe said.

The government has undertaken massive efforts to control bird flu and on Tuesday announced the nation's entire poultry stock of 14 billion fowl would be vaccinated. Tens of millions of others have already been culled.

In Liaoning, the scene of four of the outbreaks, farmers have also been banned from raising their chickens outdoors in an attempt to stop them coming into contact with migratory birds.

In the capital Beijing, all live poultry and bird markets were shut down early this month.

Bekedam praised the Chinese government's containment measures as "almost textbook".

In an effort to reassure the nation, Premier Wen Jiabao said China would defeat the bird flu just as it overcame the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome crisis more than two years ago.

China is stepping up efforts in studying the efficiency of traditional Chinese medicine to help prevent or control human cases of bird flu, Xinhua news agency said.

The State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine has launched a working group to supervise and coordinate the study, according to the agency.

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