China is setting up a surveillance system in an eastern province to monitor
wild birds in an attempt to halt any spread of bird flu on a major migration
route, the government said Thursday.
One hundred monitoring stations and 1,000 workers will be spread throughout
Jiangsu province, the Xinhua News Agency said.
The recent discovery of birds infected with the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus
strain in the Middle East, Western Europe and Africa has reinforced the belief
that wild birds are spreading the disease.
Experts estimate that about 3 million migratory birds will fly to Jiangsu in
the next two months as the weather warms, and 5 million more will pass through,
Xinhua said. It did not give more details about the birds' routes.
"The huge quantity of migrant birds is a severe challenge. A single infected
bird may infect its whole group," the agency quoted Xu Huiqiang, an official
with the Jiangsu Forestry Bureau, as saying.
Inspectors will check dead birds and test droppings, and any sign of bird flu
will trigger an emergency response, it said, without elaborating.
It said migratory birds are believed to have carried in the H5N1 virus that
caused six bird flu outbreaks in four Chinese provinces since October.
Also Thursday, a government Web site and a Hong Kong newspaper said at least
6,000 chicks have died on a poultry farm in southern China's Guangzhou province
from a suspected parasite-related illness, but officials have not ruled out bird
flu as a cause, reports the AP.
