With the autumn and winter months coming up, marking the migration season for birds, China has tightened up its prevention measures for avian influenza. It has initiated daily reports on the bird flu status instead of the earlier weekly reports at its 86 monitoring stations and asked citizens as well as officials to be particularly alert.
The end of the year marks the time when thousands of birds will fly over China in search of warmer climates and the government wants to leave no stone unturned in its prevention techniques. An estimated 100,000 are expected to fly over the country from Russia and Mongolia in October alone.
Farmers have been warned in a statement by Vice Minister of Agriculture Yin Chengjie, not to allow local poultry or pet birds to mingle with these migratory birds. Added, anyone spotting an ill or dead bird is immediately to report the matter to health officials.
International bodies have also expressed concern that China, the world's largest producer of poultry products is under-equipped to handle the situation. They site lack of funds, shortage of staff, insufficient vaccines and expansive countrysides as some of the drawbacks that the country has to wrestle with.
The past fifteen days alone have seen two outbreaks of bird flu leading to the death and culling of over 2000 birds in the northwestern regions of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia. Although no humans were affected in this case, China has already seen the death of 14 people due to bird flue. Added, scientists are increasingly worried that a strain of the virus might mutate and then enable the disease to be transferred from human to human, causing a pandemic.
