China educates farmers on pig-borne disease
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-07-30 11:33

Beijing and the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, banned pig and pork imports from Sichuan, newspapers said on Saturday.

The Chinese capital set up checkpoints and tightened screening on roads leading into the capital to block diseased pork and avert a health threat to its nearly 15 million residents.

Officials in Sichuan and Beijing have been tight-lipped about the outbreak, which the China Daily says was discovered on June 24.

The health ministry has said the rising numbers were the result of the discovery of previously unknown cases and did not necessarily mean the disease was spreading.

Streptococcus suis, swine flu in layman's terms, is endemic in swine in most pig-rearing countries in the world but human infections are rare. Although China's state media have said no human-to-human infections had been found in Sichuan, the death toll is considered unusually high.

Swine flu is not known ever to have been passed between humans, but scientists fear it could mutate into a bug that could easily pass among people, unleashing a deadly epidemic.