Bird Flu Spreads to China

The deadly bird flu outbreak in Asia appeared to be spinning out of control yesterday as China joined a growing list of countries affected by a virus that has killed eight people and devastated poultry stocks across the region.

In a sign of the growing alarm, the World Health Organisation has called for emergency funds from the international community.

The EU, the US and Asian states will attempt to coordinate a global response to the crisis at an emergency conference in Bangkok today.

After days of denials, the Chinese government acknowledged that the avian influenza had surfaced in a duck farm in Dingdang, Guangxi province.

The farm is close to the border with Vietnam, where the first human casualties were reported this month. The Xinhua news agency said 14,000 birds in and around the farm had been slaughtered and all other fowl within a five-mile radius quarantined.

But the measures to halt the spread of the disease in China may be too late. Two other suspected cases have been reported hundreds of miles away in the central provinces of Hubei and Hunan.

No human cases have been found in China, but tests have shown that the ducks were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be passed from chickens to humans.

Thailand yesterday confirmed its second fatality from the disease. Like the six previous Vietnamese victims - all but one of whom were children - the six-year-old boy lived in close proximity to chickens.

Already more deadly than the outbreak in 1997 which claimed six lives in Hong Kong, the virus could become far more dangerous if it mutates to allow transmission between humans. WHO officials say urgent action is needed to prevent the worst-case scenario: a repeat of the flu pandemic in 1918 which claimed more than 40 million lives worldwide.

The WHO and the UN's food and agriculture administration launched a global appeal for funds and expertise. "This is a serious global threat to human health," said the head of the WHO, Lee Jong-wook. "We must begin this hard, costly work now."

Among the priorities will be the development of a new vaccine for humans. WHO officials said the standard flu vaccine used by millions of people each year was not effective against H5N1. However, three more expensive anti-virals are effective and WHO has urged pharmaceutical companies to prepare to mass-produce them in case the outbreak reaches pandemic proportions.

Thought to be carried by migrating birds and a vast, live poultry trade, the virus has proved difficult to control, particularly because many countries appear to have covered-up outbreaks for several months.

Yesterday the Laos agriculture ministry confirmed chickens on a farm near the capital, Vientiane, did have bird flu but said further tests were needed to tell if it was the H5N1 strain.

China and Laos bring the number of affected countries to 10. The others are South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand. An estimated 70 million birds have died or been culled.

The few countries in the region that have escaped so far are intensifying their defences. Singapore and Malaysia have reactivated the surveillance systems they used last year to combat the Sars virus.