Many frugal farmers in southwest China are refusing to bury infected pigs safely, Chinese media said yesterday, raising fears that a deadly swine flu could spread further after infecting almost 200 people and killing 36.
Draconian measures were in place around the Chinese capital to prevent infection. The Beijing News said city authorities had blocked inward shipments of about 4,000 tonnes of pork and pork products from stricken Sichuan Province up to July 31.
Many impoverished Sichuan farmers, having already bought piglets, inoculation and feed, are refusing to spend more on burying sick pigs with disinfectant. Instead, they slaughter them and eat the meat themselves.
"Households are not following guidelines in dealing with sick and dead pigs to prevent possible harm," the Beijing News said.
Asked whether her family had followed government orders to dispose of their sick pigs, the wife of farmer Liu Yanxue in Sichuan's hard-hit Zizhong County reportedly told state television: "At any rate, we didn't eat them."
Zizhong health worker Wen Youhai had admitted to simply taking farmers' word that they had properly handled sick pigs rather than observing burials in person, the daily said.
The Health Ministry Web site, in its latest bulletin, said two deaths and 17 infections with pig-borne bacteria Streptococcus suis had been reported between Sunday and midday Monday in Sichuan.
Health officials insist the outbreak is under control and that the latest victims represented previously undiagnosed cases, not new cases which would indicate the disease was spreading.
A total of 198 people in 108 villages and townships in Sichuan had contracted the disease, apparently from slaughtering, handling or eating infected pigs, the ministry said.
The official China Youth Daily published a picture of a stall owner in Ziyang city, where the disease was first reported in June, selling pork at a traditional market. The headline read: "Ziyang residents dare to sell pork again."
In one unconfirmed report, the Chongqing Evening News said last week an unscrupulous meat dealer had dug up sick and dead pigs he was forced by police to bury a day earlier and sold the meat in a nearby town for a big profit.
Sichuan has launched a campaign to educate illiterate farmers and their children not to slaughter or eat sick pigs.
The government has also vowed to punish officials caught covering up or delaying reports on infections. Two officials and one health inspector have already been sacked for negligence.
While most of the infections have been found in Sichuan, cases have also been reported in Guangdong Province and neighboring Hong Kong. Shipments of pork from Sichuan, China's top producer, to Hong Kong have been stopped and the city has stepped up inspections and quarantine procedures on all live pigs and frozen pork imported from the mainland.
Hong Kong health experts have confirmed the bacteria as Streptococcus suis and found no evidence of any mutation, the South China Morning Post said.
The capital's health authorities also issued guidelines on the detection and prevention of the disease, which has been identified as streptococcus suis bacteria, the newspaper said. They include setting up a notification mechanism on the epidemic between health and agriculture authorities, the tightening of surveillance on suspected cases and more stringent inspection of pork and pork products.
Illegal butchering is also banned while restaurants are forbidden from buying and serving pork that has not been quarantined, it added.
Experts say butchering and eating infected pork is the only way for humans to catch the disease.
Meanwhile, authorities in Sichuan have begun to manufacture large quantities of vaccine for swine, with an initial batch of between 700,000 to 800,000 doses produced so far, Xinhua news agency said. All the vaccines for pigs will be "strictly checked" by the ministry of agriculture before they are released on the market, it said.
Another Xinhua report quoted unnamed health officials as saying that no vaccines have yet been developed for humans.
The bacteria is endemic in Asia, North America and Europe, with the first recorded human case in Denmark in 1968. More than 200 cases of human infection have been reported globally since then, not counting the latest outbreak.
The epidemic has so far affected 155 villages in seven cities in Sichuan.
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