China confirms its first human bird-flu cases
(AP/China Daily)
Updated: 2005-11-17 06:20

Financial incentives offered to boost fight

Also Wednesday, China decided to offer financial incentives to poultry businesses to help them cope better and boost the fight against bird flu.

Poultry processing and marketing businesses will be exempted from corporate tax and enjoy tax rebates this year, according to a meeting of the State Council China's cabinet presided over by Premier Wen Jiabao.

The poultry industry will also enjoy reduction or exemption of land-use, real-estate and vehicle taxes during the first half of 2006.

These decisions were among the nine measures adopted to check the spread of bird flu.

The meeting passed a draft regulation on emergency response to a serious animal epidemic.

It outlined measures, including preparation, monitoring, reporting and announcement and legal liabilities of governments, businesses and individuals in an epidemic outbreak.

The government also promised subsidies for vaccinating and culling poultry in outbreak areas and to foot the bill of vaccines.

All compulsory injections of vaccine against bird flu will be free.

Banks have been ordered to extend the loan payment periods of major poultry businesses and not penalize those who default on repayments during the bird flu outbreaks.

Employees laid off by affected businesses will enjoy unemployment insurance or subsistence allowances of urban residents.

The meeting also called for more efforts to change the current household poultry-breeding pattern to a collective model for better control.

Health experts have repeatedly warned human infections would be inevitable if China cannot stop more poultry epidemics.

Also Wednesday, Vietnamese authorities reported bird flu outbreaks in three more provinces, bringing to 12 the number of cities and provinces affected recently. Vietnam is in the middle of a campaign to destroy all poultry in most of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, its two biggest cities.

Ministers at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Busan, South Korea, urged more information-sharing and response systems to combat bird flu. "New global pandemics, like avian influenza, require new, concerted action," said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.