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Beijing says to detain anyone refusing to immune poultry
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-06 16:15 Meanwhile, Japan was mulling
a plan to give 300 million yen (US$2.6 million) to the WHO to help combat bird
flu and other infectious outbreaks in developing countries, the national
newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported Sunday, citing unnamed government sources.
Tokyo, which gave around 160 million yen (US$1.36 million) to the global
health agency for 2005, said the money would be used to improve surveillance of
infection routes of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the
report said.
The government was also planning to invite influenza
experts from Vietnam, Indonesia and other countries early next year for training
at the National Institute of Infectious Disease in Tokyo, Yomiuri Shimbun
reported.
Officials at the Health and Agricultural Ministries were not
available for comment Sunday.
The response comes a day after Indonesian
officials confirmed that a 19-year-old woman died of bird flu, bringing the
number of people killed by the disease in Indonesia to five.
The woman,
from the town of Tangerang on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, was
believed to have contracted the virus from infected dead chickens in her
neighborhood, Ministry of Health official Hariadi Wibisono said Saturday.
An 8-year-old boy from her family was hospitalized with the virus, but
it was not immediately clear how the young boy contracted the disease.
Since late 2003, the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu has ravaged
poultry stocks and killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia.
Most of the human deaths have been linked to close contact
with infected birds. But experts fear the virus could mutate into a form easily
passed among humans, and possibly trigger a worldwide
pandemic.
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