BEIJING - UN specialists have warned that the bird flu outbreak in China is getting worse than previously thought. They have called for China to immediately isolate and disinfect the affected area to prevent the disease from spreading.
Specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), who have just visited Qinghai province, reported that about 5,000 birds have died on an island in the province.
Dr Julie Hall, a coordinator with the WHO, who is in charge of the outbreak in China, said that this is the first outbreak of bird flu to cause the deaths of so many migratory birds.
She urged the relevant Chinese organizations to urgently test the migratory birds with the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus before the birds on the island migrate to other countries adjacent to China.
Specialists have pointed out that there are 189 kinds of bird on the island. But the Chinese government has only tested five of them to date.
In May, the Chinese government said that only about one thousand wild birds had died.
The Chinese government has been widely criticized for previously hiding the spread of epidemics. In 2003, the Chinese government sealed off news of the outbreak of SARS and thus caused a worldwide spread of the disease, which resulted in the death of hundreds of people.
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