Shandong Province, east China, has reinstated
round-the-clock bird flu monitoring to prevent possible outbreaks
as more and more migratory birds fly over the province on their way
further south.
Li Zhanpeng, head of the provincial wildlife protection center,
said that all 153 monitoring stations in the province were ordered
to report on a daily basis.
Local people were also called on to report deaths of wild birds
to the provincial wildlife protection center. Its telephone hot
line number is 0531-88557707, Li said.
Wild birds migrate through eight routes around the world, three
of which traverse China. Migratory birds flying from East Asia to
Australia pass Shandong Province.
China has reported nine outbreaks of bird flu in poultry this
year, in northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, north
China's Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia, east China's Anhui
Province, southwestern Guizhou and Sichuan provinces and the
central province of Hunan.
Since 2003 China has reported 21 human infections of bird flu
which have caused 14 deaths. Globally, the World Health
Organization (WHO) has recorded 256 human infections including 151
deaths as of Oct. 16.
(Xinhua News Agency November 3, 2006)