China pledges openness as it fights bird flu

China has learned the lessons of the Sars outbreak and pledged complete openness as it fights bird flu in its multibillion domestic poultry flock.

The pledge came as Pacific rim experts met in Australia for a second day to discuss ways of fighting the virus.

“From Sars, we see that no … information can be hidden,” China’s disease control director Qi Xiaoqiu said yesterday while visiting the United States. “We have policies to encourage farmers to report possible outbreaks.”

China was heavily criticised during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome for initially covering up the illness. Now Beijing says it is committed to quickly investigating and reporting possible bird flu cases to the public and world health groups.

China has reported three bird flu outbreaks in poultry over the past month. No human cases have been reported.

At least 62 people have died of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in Southeast Asia since 2003, and concern is growing that H5N1 could mutate into a human flu virus that could spark a global pandemic.

China’s domestic poultry population is more than 14 billion, Qi said – 50 percent of Asia’s total – and more than half the birds are raised in small, scattered, often rural farms, making detection and treatment a challenge.

Qi said China has provided subsidies for farmers who quickly report sick birds to authorities. Once a case is found, Qi said, officials kill all birds within 2 miles and vaccinate all birds within 3 miles.

“There is great possibility for avian influenza breakouts in China,” Qi said. “The Chinese government is very much committed to its prevention and control.”

In Brisbane, a United Nations official said fighting bird flu in impoverished Southeast Asian nations could cost £56m (€82.5m) over the next two-to-three years.

“If the disease spreads from eastern Europe into Africa, then just for emergency support we’ll require an additional £41m (€60m),” said Subhash Morvaria from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s regional office in Bangkok.

Morvaria urged nations to fight the disease in birds as a first line of defence against it mutating into a human flu virus that could trigger a deadly global pandemic.

“As long as the disease remains in the domestic poultry sector, there is going to be a threat to humans. So the focus has to be in the animals. Even if a pandemic occurs, the problem will not go away as long as the disease remains in domestic poultry,” he said.

Meanwhile, signs of bird flu were detected at a duck farm in western Japan.

Preliminary tests on 10 ducks at a farm in Osaka show that some of the birds may be infected with Type A bird flu, according to Tadayoshi Nakai, a farming official.

Type A influenza viruses are divided into subtypes based on to proteins on the surface of the virus, hemagglutinin, or H, and neuraminidase, or N.

If the ducks test positive for types H5 or the less harmful H7, the farm will be ordered to kill its 780 birds, Nakai said. Final test results may be available later today, he said.

The latest case follows the announcement yesterday that authorities detected signs of bird flu at a farm in northern Japan and planned to kill 82,000 chickens.

In Canada, senior government officials said nearly three dozen wild birds had tested positive for H5 influenza, but also said it was unlikely that it was the H5N1 strain of the virus.

Dr Jim Clark, of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, said it would take at least one week to determine whether the flu found in 33 wild ducks from the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba was the deadly H5N1 strain that has ravaged Asian poultry farms.

None of the wild ducks was ill, he told a news conference. The birds were among thousands that have been sampled in Canada.