Beijing on alert after bird flu death

2009-1-8

AGRICULTURE officials have issued an alert against bird flu after a 19-year-old woman died of the disease in Beijing.

Workers disinfected the Yanjiaoqingong Market in Sanhe, Hebei Province neighboring Beijing, yesterday morning. The woman bought nine ducks at the market on December 19 and died of bird flu on Monday in a Beijing hospital.

The market's five shops selling live poultry have been closed.

The government of Sanhe City, under the jurisdiction of Langfang, has set up an emergency group headed by the city's Communist Party Chief Li Gang to deal with bird flu prevention, quarantine and market-regulation issues.

Local health authorities examined 15 people engaged in the live poultry trade in the market, and all of them were free of the disease. The authorities also surveyed city residents who had been diagnosed with fever and all poultry farms, and found no problems.

Beijing has banned live poultry from other parts of the country from entering the city. Experts have begun to inspect the city's slaughterhouses and poultry farms.

No domestic fowl were kept within 10 kilometers of the Sanjianfangdong Village of Chaoyang District in Beijing where the dead woman lived, said city officials.

In Tianjin, the suspected origin of the ducks, authorities also started bird flu prevention measures. Experts from the Ministry of Agriculture and the city have gone to Jixian County to inspect the poultry market. They found no signs of bird flu.