Huang Shengde, once an obscure farmer living in a remote village in south China, believes all the media hubbub around him will subside after China lifts the quarantine from its first bird flu-infected site Sunday.

Huang, 32, has been a media star in China since Jan. 23, when he reported massive deaths of his ducks at his farm in Dingdang Town in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Four days later, his ducks were confirmed as affected by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

"I want to express my gratitude to those who cared for and helped us," said Huang. "I will continue to raise ducks as soon as it is safe to do so, but I must handle vaccination work carefully."

After more than 20 days of strict quarantine, the Chinese Bird Flu Prevention and Control Headquarters announced Sunday to lift the quarantine on Dingdang Town after the avian influenza outbreak, saying the epidemic has been totally contained in the town as no new bird flu cases have been reported for the past 21 days.

The entire town was put under quarantine on Jan. 27, when the bird flu outbreak was confirmed, and no person in the villages was allowed to leave.

"We have passed the strict criteria of the Ministry of Agriculture," said Tang Bowen, magistrate of Long'an County, after a team of experts from the ministry assessed the bird flu prevention and control work in the county.

"The prevention and control measures taken by the local governments were timely, appropriate and professional," said Xu Ji, an assistant representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to China. He made this remark to local officials after he and Laurence Gleeson, another FAO expert, completed an inspection tour of Guangxi last week.

However, the news of the removal of the quarantine might have come a little early for Pan Mingfu, a farmer who works about one hectare of land in the town's Yong'anli Village.

"I firmly believed that the bird flu epidemic would be finally controlled, but I did not expect the announcement to come so early."

Expressing his congratulations to Dingdang Town, Zhang Mingpei, a senior official with the Ministry of Agriculture, also recommended cautious optimism.

"China still faces a tough task to contain the bird flu epidemic since the disease has been reported in other provinces, municipalities and autonomous region on the Chinese mainland," Zhang said.

Hen houses are still empty, picture posters on bird flu prevention are still hanging in every household in Dingdang Town as local people have been told not to resume poultry raising for the next six months, or buy fowls from other places.

"We are not going to relax our vigilance after the lifting of the quarantine," said the town's head Lin Yi. "More work still needs to be done to improve our epidemic-control mechanism to prevent any resurgence of the disease," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2004)