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The Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, today (March 7) met with the H5N1 Concern Group to listen to the group's briefing on its objectives and work.
Dr Chow hoped the group's future work could help enhance the publicˇ¦s sense of fighting against the disease. Their work could play a complementary role to the Government's various preventive measures against avian influenza, he added.
Dr Chow introduced to the group the series of measures adopted by the Government in the light of a confirmed fatal case of human infection of H5N1 virus in Guangzhou, including the suspension of the supply of live poultry, day-old chicks and pet birds from the Guangdong Province.
He said the patient of the confirmed case, who lived in the urban area, did not visit any poultry farm but had spent time staying in wet markets where chickens, ducks and geese were put together.
The Guangdong Province had adopted the most stringent preventive measures against avian influenza, including giving vaccination to all the chickens reared in farms and backyards. While there was no avian influenza outbreak in live poultry farms, a human infection case was found in the province. It was therefore necessary for both Guangdong and Hong Kong to locate the source of infection to protect the health of the public.
Dr Chow said: "The Government has decided to adopt a more cautious approach and suspend the supply of live poultry, day-old chicks and pet birds for three weeks after considering all the relevant factors. The Department of Health has sent experts to the Mainland to jointly study the case with the relevant departments there."
In response to doubts about the rationale behind a three-week suspension, Dr Chow explained that we might not be accurate with our findings in a short while. It would be necessary to have experts trace and locate the mode of infection. Three weeks should have allowed us sufficient time to study the case, he said.
"We understand that the measure would affect the poultry trade and the public. But we hope the public will understand the decision was made to protect public health. Public health is always our top priority and above other considerations.
"The State General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) and the Guangdong Province had taken many measures to ensure the health and safety of the chickens supplied to Hong Kong.
"Yet we have to stay vigilant. In the coming three weeks, we would maintain close communication with the Mainland on the investigation of the human avian influenza case. Hong Kong would step up inspection and monitoring of the hygiene conditions in all local farms, wholesale and retail markets. We would also strengthen our efforts to crack down on smuggling activities on birds and poultry."
Regarding chilled chickens, past records showed that no human had been infected with avian influenza through contacts with chilled poultry meat. Avian influenza virus would not spread or multiply in dead poultry or carcasses. So far, no problem was found with the Mainland designated chicken farms which supplied chickens to Hong Kong. Therefore, the supply of chilled chickens would continue at the moment. According to the present arrangement with the Mainland, if there was any outbreak in any chicken farm, including those in Guangdong, Hong Kong would suspend the import of all poultry meat from the place where the outbreak occurred.
The Government believed that a decrease in the number of locally reared chickens could reduce the risk of avian influenza infection in Hong Kong. Even if there was an outbreak, the situation could be put under control promptly, Dr Chow said.
He added that the Government had no intention of eliminating the local poultry trade, adding that the prime consideration was to protect the lives and safety of the public.
"In fact, the Government has in July last year explained to the public and the Legislative Council over the lowering of the maximum licensing capacity in local chicken farms to two million. The trade has expressed understanding of our measure and has recently asked for a slight postponement of the implementation date.
"In view of the increasing risk of avian influenza outbreak, the Government hopes poultry farmers could seriously consider joining the voluntary surrender scheme for live poultry farmers to surrender their livestock keeping licences and to accept the ex-gratia payment. The deadline for joining the scheme is August this year," he said.
On top of the above measures, the urgent introduction of legislative amendment to ban backyard poultry keeping to prevent human infection resulted from cross-infection between poultry and wild birds was also believed to be an effective measure to further reduce the current risk of avian influenza, Dr Chow said.
As for the implementation of central slaughtering, Dr Chow said the Government hoped it could be put into practice within a certain time frame. The Government would allow the poultry trade in compliance with safety conditions to continue rearing chickens before central slaughtering was implemented.
"We will brief the Legislative Council next week on the details of the scheme. We hope legislators will support this policy that could effectively separate humans from chickens and reduce the risk of avian influenza, or else the policy could hardly be implemented," he said.
Ends/Tuesday, March 7, 2006
Issued at HKT 21:07
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