BEIJING - Amid global
fears that a deadly bird flu virus sweeping
through bird flocks in Asia could mutate into a
human flu that could kill millions, preparedness
to handle a possible worldwide outbreak is
becoming the new front of cooperation for the
United States and China.
"Avian flu is the
number one internal development in China that is
causing serious concern in Washington because of
the country's history as a launching pad for other
infectious diseases," said Bates Gill, a China
researcher with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a leading think tank based
in Washington.
"There is an enormous
importance attached to the way China copes with
the spread of the virus."
Establishing and
enforcing an early warning system for epidemics
such as bird flu is one of the issues President
George W Bush will discuss with the Chinese
leaders during his visit to China from November 19
to 21, said Bonnie Glaser, also with the center.
Glaser and Gill spoke to the foreign media
in Beijing as Bush issued an urgent warning about
the bird flu last week, unveiling a US$7 billion
flu-fighting plan.
Against the backdrop of
the plan, which calls for global preparedness for
vaccination, quarantine and treatment, Beijing and
Washington are discussing how to strengthen
China's public health capacity.
US
researchers say the ability of China's local
centers in disease prevention has been weakening
because of years of financial neglect from the
central authorities.
"A new disease
agreement between Washington and Beijing is seen
emerging, and that is likely to emphasize
capacity-building for China's public health," Gill
said.
This was confirmed by Bush while
talking with the media at the While House this
week. He said, "One other aspect of the trip [to
China] ... we'll continue our dialogue on avian
flu, a potential pandemic, and how we can work
together to detect and keep the folks informed
about the possible outbreak of avian flu; how to
isolate the flu - the virus, if it's detected, and
what we can do together. This will be an important
way to continue to advance this issue. I've spoken
to the president of China [Hu Jintao] about this
issue, for example, and I'm going to bring it up
again."
The high-profile attention to
Beijing's preparedness to fight the bird flu comes
as China beefed up dramatically its measures to
contain the incremental spread of the disease
among its large domestic poultry and called in the
World Health Organization (WHO) to determine
whether it had suffered its first human case of
the virus.
The authorities were quick to
deny that a 12-year-old girl from Hunan province
in central China, who died after eating a chicken
believed to be infected with the H5N1 virus, had
contracted the bird flu.
But on the
weekend, Beijing reversed its stance and the state
news agency Xinhua carried a brief statement
saying the disease "had not been ruled out" as the
cause of her death, or the similar illness that
had affected her younger brother and a local
village teacher.
"After conducting
comprehensive analysis, experts said although the
three cases are diagnosed as pneumonia of unknown
causes at present, the possibility of human
infection of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of
bird flu cannot be ruled out," a spokesman for the
Ministry of Health was quoted by the agency.
The girl, He Yin, had died two weeks
earlier after eating a chicken that had fallen
ill. The village's birds were later confirmed to
be suffering from the disease.
In a sign
of how serious and widespread the problem might
be, the authorities ordered all 168 live poultry
markets in Beijing shut, banned the import of
poultry products from the provinces in the capital
and announced a temporary halt to domesticated
pigeon flying.
Officials in Beijing also
went door-to-door seizing live chickens and ducks
being raised in homes and encouraged residents to
report on any chicken slaughtering. Health
officials also announced a crackdown on peddlers
selling birds that had died from the flu in the
affected areas in the country.
China
reported four outbreaks in October - in Inner
Mongolia, Anhui, Hunan and Liaoning provinces. The
latest outbreak - reported in Heishan county in
the northeast Liaoning province - just a few hours
travel from Beijing, has raised alarms that the
virus is encroaching on the capital and prompted
authorities to call in the army and the military
police to help isolate the affected villages.
The China Daily reported that the Chinese
People's Liberation Army had chalked out
contingency plans to face any threat. Military
hospitals were put on alert to isolate outpatients
with fever and respiratory diseases and prepare
for possible human infections.
China has
not officially recorded a single human case, but
it has imposed increasingly strict measures
following warnings that a human case is inevitable
if the country can't prevent the occurrence of
outbreaks among its poultry.
China is home
to 13 billion farmed poultry, almost a quarter of
the world's total. Most of the country is exposed
to the migratory routes of wild birds believed to
be one of the sources for spreading the infection.
The central government has said it will
set aside 2 billion yuan ( US$25 million) out of
this year's fiscal budget for bird flu prevention
and a control fund to create a national
headquarters for bird flu control and prevention.
The WHO has praised China for being more
open about bird flu than it was about the SARS
epidemic two years ago in which hundreds of people
were infected and many died before the government
admitted to the scale of the problem.
Nevertheless, transparency remains a deep
concern. Local officials fearing the negative
impact of an epidemic emerging in their areas
often try to suppress the news and deal with it
internally rather than report it to Beijing.
So far, the latest outbreak of bird flu
has killed 62 people in Cambodia, Indonesia,
Thailand and Vietnam.
