Yunnan Monitoring of Bird Flu
Recombinomics Commentary
January 8, 2005
>>Meanwhile, the local animal husbandry department has set up a 30-km-wide "immune protection zone" in the border area neighboring Vietnam and set up disinfecting stations at the frontier passages and border ports to make thorough check and disinfect all vehicles and personnel passing by.
A three-layer report system, involving participation of households, villages and township, has been built in rural areas of Yunnan. Any outbreak of bird flu should be reported to higher authority within 24 hours.<<
Yunnan Province in PR China has stepped up bird flu surveillance in response to the sudden increase in human and poultry cases of H5N1 avian influenza. In December, 2003 initial reports of H5N1 infections in children at a Hanoi hospital marked the reported beginning of the H5N1 outbreaks. This season there have been scatter reports, but the largest number of poultry infections and the first reports of human confirmed and fatal cases was in the Mekong Delta region.
There have now been six suspect or confirmed human cases forming two clusters in the Mekong Delta. Between the two clusters is Can Tho city where almost half of duck samples have been positive for H5N1.
Yunnan province is focusing on areas that have had infections last season and is recommending vaccination of flocks in susceptible areas, although the recent outbreaks in Vietnam have been concentrated in the Mekong Delta region, which is closer to the tsunami hit areas of Thailand than to the Yunnan border province.
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