China's first confirmed case of bird flu in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region may have no direct link with the avian epidemic sweeping across neighbouring Viet Nam, a regional animal disease prevention official said yesterday.

"Neither did the fowl infected with the deadly H5N1 virus come from Viet Nam, nor had the farmers who raised the flocks been to the epidemic regions in the bordering country," said Bi Qiang. "We suspect migratory wild birds might have transmitted the infection."

The woods, ponds and rivers within bird flu epidemic areas in Guangxi are habitats for those wild birds, said Bi, director of Guangxi regional epidemic control office.

While trying to locate the source of the contagion, spotted in Xingning District of Nanning last week following China's first confirmed bird flu case in Dingdang Town of Longan County, Guangxi, on January 27 the region has left no stone unturned to curb the spread of the epidemic, Bi said.

He also said an intensive investigation has found no link between the cases in Dingdang Town and Xingning District.

The autonomous region, which shares a 1,020-kilometre land border with Viet Nam, has set up checkpoints on virtually all border roads to stop poultry and poultry products in Viet Nam from entering China.

It shut down all the live fowl markets on the border nearly a month ago, said Bi.

"Villagers in the two neighbours used to exchange fowl or their products as Spring Festival gifts," Bi said. "We dissuaded them from doing so this year."

The official said local quarantine staff culled 199,000 domestic birds in Xingning District by Tuesday, and closed live poultry markets within 10 kilometres of the epidemic area.

To ensure every possible bird flu and other animal disease outbreaks can be reported in a timely and accurate fashion, local veterinary authorities have assigned a professional worker to each village.

They are working in tandem with 16,000 village veterinaries to help guarantee animal health in Guangxi, said the official.

Pang Jijun, director of the Liangfeng Animal Husbandry Co, the largest poultry breeder in Nanning, yesterday said the odds are very low that the thousands of chicken in his establishment will be affected by the bird flu.

The company, founded 30 years ago, has implemented a chain of stringent sanitary and quarantine measures, including disinfecting staffers who return to work after going home, he said.

But Pang said he had one thing to worry about.

"If any area within 3 kilometres of my company reported a bird flu outbreak, all the flocks in my company will have to be destroyed - this is stipulated in China's animal epidemic prevention law."

To avert that scenario, Bi assured that Guangxi regional government mandated a compulsory vaccination on all the flocks in areas within 5 kilometres from any large poultry breeders.

Pang is satisfied with that. He said he anticipated sales of breeding poultry will pick up drastically after the outbreaks across Guangxi and elsewhere of China have been quelled.

Last year, Pang's company sold 1 million chickens a month. The sales have dropped to 800,000 monthly so far this year, he said.

(China Daily February 12, 2004)