11. Aug 2005
Outbreak of bird flu in Lhasa
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a total of 2,608 birds were culled after an outbreak of a deadly strain of bird flu in a farm belonging to the Regional Institute of Animal Husbandry Science, in a suburb of Lhasa. Carolyn Benigno, an animal health officer with the FAO in Bangkok, told Kyodo News that 133 chickens died of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus. No human infection has been reported. The infected compound had been quarantined, the surroundings sealed off and disinfected, and chickens in all farms of the region have been vaccinated. Bernard Vallat, director-general of the world animal health body OIE, stated that China's failure to apply bird vaccination across the entire country might explain the outbreak of bird flu in Tibet. He added, "we can hope that now they will extend vaccination and that the virus will be quickly contained". H5N1 has devastated poultry stocks across Asia, killing or prompting the slaughter of hundreds of millions of chickens and ducks since 2003. It also claimed 61 human lives. To date, vaccines for water fowl have been distributed to all areas across the TAR except Ngari Prefecture. An application from the TAR to sell poultry in Hong Kong was suspended by the city's department for Health, Welfare and Food. The department said it would closely monitor the development of the case in the next few weeks. The outbreak in Lhasa is the second incident of the H5N1 virus in a Tibetan region this year, following an outbreak in Qinghai Province (Amdo) in May. However, according to Xinhua, Lhasa also identified a case of bird flu in 2004.