Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — A drought in northern China that has
limited drinking water to almost 4 million people may also be
making birds more susceptible to the deadly H5N1 avian-flu strain.
The lack of rainfall in Shandong, Shaanxi and other northern
provinces since October causes stress for local fowl, said
, who
specializes in birds. “Any sort of stress would make birds more
susceptible to disease,” she said by e-mail today.
Bird flu killed five people in China last month, three of
whom were from regions experiencing drought.
, a
health adviser to the Hong Kong government, said yesterday China
has an outbreak of bird flu among poultry that its government
hasn’t reported.
“As drinking water becomes more scarce for wild birds, they
may come into closer contact with domestic fowl, increasing
chances of cross-infection,” said
, agricultural
commodities manager at Shanghai Continent Futures Co. in Dalian.
The Chinese government last week reported the nation’s fifth
bird flu death in 2009. The deaths were in the provinces of
Shandong, Hunan, Guangxi, the municipality of Beijing and the
Xinjiang autonomous region. Shandong, Xinjiang and Beijing have
droughts.
About 3.7 million people and 1.85 million big animals have
limited access to drinking water in northern China, the Ministry
of Water Resources said on its Web site yesterday. Reduced soil
moisture affected an estimated 9.7 million hectares of crops, it
said.
Deng Haihua, director of the
news
department, declined to comment. The
didn’t respond to faxed questions about bird flu.
Hong Kong’s government has found 18 dead birds on Lantau
Island, three testing positive for the H5 strain of avian flu.
Further testing is required to determine whether they carried the
H5N1 strain, which can kill humans.
The city’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation
Department said it’s working with Chinese authorities to
determine whether the dead birds washed ashore on Lantau from the
mainland.
“There’s no doubt of an outbreak of bird flu in China,
though the government hasn’t admitted it,” Lo, the Hong Kong
health adviser, said in an interview yesterday.
Health and disease tolerance determine how easily illness
can spread between birds, said the veterinary association’s Leong.
A drought “does not mean that it would be automatically easier
for disease to travel from one bird to another bird,” she said.
China has said eight people have been infected by bird flu
this year, including those killed by the disease. A three-year-
old girl in Shanxi province infected by the H5N1 strain was
discharged from a local hospital yesterday, making her the
youngest person in China to survive an infection, the Ministry of
Health said today.
Gong Guifen, director of the poultry division at the China
Animal Agriculture Association in Beijing, said there are no
direct links between drought and cases of bird flu.
“Poultry birds are more susceptible to viruses when the
weather is cold or when living conditions are dense,” she said.
“But this winter hasn’t been that cold.”
Last Updated: February 4, 2009 04:17 EST