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)