Four county-level officials were sacked for deception and
failing to do their jobs in dealing with the Streptococcus suis
outbreak in southwest China's Sichuan
Province, Neijiang City's Discipline Inspection Committee
announced on August 5.
The officials were Li Mingzhong, chief of Zizhong County animal
husbandry and food bureau, Liu Wei and Jiang Xiaogang, chief and
deputy chief of the county animal epidemic prevention and
supervision station, and Chen Bin, chief of Taiping Town animal
husbandry and veterinary station.
Seventy-eight pigs died between July 15 and 24 in Zizhong, a
Neijiang county near Ziyang City, where the first case of the
pig-borne disease was reported on June 24.
Li and his colleagues are alleged to have fabricated a report
that the pigs had been either buried deeply or slaughtered, or that
their whereabouts were unknown.
On July 27, state inspectors asked Li's office to verify the
whereabouts of six of the pigs' carcasses, but they did not do
so.
Three days later, reporters from China Central Television were
taken by Li, Liu, Jiang and Chen to the homes of six farmers whose
pigs had died. The apparent aim was to show how the pigs were
properly disposed of but the reporters discovered more questions
than answers.
The four officials then tried to deceive a county investigation
team on August 1, said Neijiang Mayor Wang Minghui, but they
failed.
By noon yesterday, the Ministry of Health (MOH)?said 39
people had died from the disease in Sichuan, the latest on Saturday
morning. In the 24 hours before Sunday noon, there were no new
infections and 16 were discharged from hospital leaving 101 in
care, 10 of whom were in a critical condition.
The MOH's daily update did not give current figures for numbers
of infections or for how many of these were confirmed, but based on
previous numbers it is thought that 210 are now infected. Of the
206 cases reported last Thursday, 165 had been confirmed and 41
were suspected.
The Ministry of Agriculture reported on Thursday that 644 pigs
had died from the disease in the province.
(China Daily August 8, 2005)