China to Vaccinate All Domesticated Birds Next Year

Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Beijing, 14 December: China will vaccinate all domestic birds with a new type of cheap vaccine that can prevent both newcastle disease and aviation influenza, or bird flu, through sprinkling, the country’s chief veterinary officer said Wednesday [14 December]. Jia Youling, the chief veterinary officer, said China will provide the vaccine for all domestic birds and focus on small-scaled household- raisers free of charge after the vaccine is put into use early next year.

“The newly developed vaccine against newcastle disease and AI can be easily deployed through sprinkling, drinking, eye-dropping and various other means,” he told a news conference. “It can significantly reduce the labour and the risk involved,” he said. It will also be very cheap as its production cost is only one fifth that vaccines available on the market, said Jia, also director of Veterinary Department of the Ministry of Agriculture.

China has confirmed some 30 outbreaks of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) this year, including five human cases of bird flue and one case of migratory bird infection in northwest Qinghai Province. Some 22.2 million poultry have been culled. There are about 14.3 billion poultry raised in China and some 690,000 villages in which most households raise only dozens of chickens.

Jia said no new suspected cases of HPAI had been reported in the country for 15 days in a row as of 13 December, and the quarantine ban has been lifted in 23 affected areas. “We are fully capable of effectively containing the spread of bird flu in China.” Jia said an active vaccination policy has been carried out in the Chinese mainland, and all domestic birds will be vaccinated gradually. “The national average poultry vaccination intensity is above 80 per cent, and efforts are still being made in all areas to vaccinate the remaining birds,” he said. According to statistics, 6.85 billion domestic birds have been vaccinated this year, with more than five billion vaccinated since October.

The chief veterinary officer refuted reports that China concealed the extent of pandemic, as some people jumped at conclusion that China covered-up facts since only two bird flu cases were reported while human infections were found in five areas. “We did fail to find any bird flu virus at the three areas where human cases of bird flu were reported, which is quite common in the other parts of the world,” said Jia. Citing Hong Kong as an example, he said the sources of bird flu virus were found in only three of the eight cases of human bird flu contraction in 1997.