Agriculture officials yesterday urged local governments to focus on their vaccination duties to help prevent fresh bird flu outbreaks this fall.

"This is a peak period for some serious animal diseases, such as bird flu," Yin Chengjie, vice-minister of agriculture, said during a meeting on prevention work in Beijing yesterday.

"Preventive measures are particularly crucial at this time because of the sharp increase in live poultry sales before the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Holiday," he said.

Yin said cases of bird flu have shown up across the globe, and the regular outbreaks of the disease in neighboring countries continue to pose a huge threat.

The call for vigilance came as the ministry confirmed that thousands of ducks in Panyu District, Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, had been killed by the H5N1 virus.

More than 36,000 ducks had been culled by Monday after a subtype of the H5N1 bird flu strain killed some 9,830 ducks raised in Panyu's Sixian village since September 5.

And the Guangzhou government plans to cull another 100,000 domestic fowl within a radius of 3 km to keep the outbreak from spreading, local authorities said.

Meanwhile, compulsory vaccinations and disinfections will be carried out within an area measuring 5 sq km, and all poultry markets within a 13-km radius will be closed.

The local government has pledged to compensate farmers for their economic losses and said the amount of the compensation would be decided soon.

More than 50 poultry farmers in the village are being given blood tests and medical checkups.

A headquarters has been established to take charge of bird flu outbreak control and prevention, according to the local agricultural bureau.

Six supervision teams have been dispatched to different regions in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, to help oversee the vaccination of all domestic fowl in the city, which is to be completed by next Tuesday, the bureau said.

Local agricultural officials will inspect poultry breeding plants and prod them to disinfect their premises regularly.

Yin said a monitoring network and pre-warning system should be set up at the grassroots level.

Mysterious poultry deaths are to be reported immediately, and anyone found suppressing or delaying information about a potential outbreak will be punished.

The ministry said it would dispatch 12 special supervisory work teams as well as expert teams to supervise the prevention work nationwide.

(China Daily September 19, 2007)