Reports on disease origin 'groundless'

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By Wang Zhuoqiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-30 07:32

The government on Wednesday rejected as "groundless" foreign reports labeling China as the origin of the swine flu outbreak.

According to the reports, dead pigs found in Fuqing, Fujian province, might be the source of the outbreak in Mexico.

But the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) said the pigs died of swine dysentery and dropsy, both common among young pigs, adding investigations into pig farms around the area found no signs of an epidemic.

China has not exported live pigs to Mexico or the United States, so the country can't be the origin of the deadly disease, the ministry said.

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No human cases of swine flu have been found in China, nor has the virus been found in pigs.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Commerce has alerted Chinese citizens to suspend work trips to Mexico and to strengthen prevention measures if they are traveling to other flu-affected countries.

China on Wednesday offered humanitarian aid worth $5 million to Mexico, including $1 million in cash and $4 million in medical supplies, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

Mexican Ambassador to China Jorge Guajardo thanked the Chinese government for its "gestures of friendship".

The US on Wednesday reported the first swine flu death outside of Mexico and the World Health Organization called an emergency meeting to consider its pandemic alert level.

Dr Hans Troedsson, the WHO representative in China, said he believed China is better placed to counter the swine flu based on lessons learned from SARS in 2003.

"China is quite well prepared," he said. "They already have a quite good surveillance system in place. And they are now going to strengthen the surveillance, both centrally and at a provincial level."

Health workers check up a patient for signs of fever at a local hospital in southwest China's Chongqing, Tuesday April 28, 2009. [CFP] more photos

But he also said China faced challenges in the fight against infectious diseases.

One was the sheer number of its 1.3 billion people and the other was the large number of migrant workers in China, both of which made total surveillance impossible, he said.

China is trying to get swine flu virus samples from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to facilitate its research on the testing of the virus, a health official said on Wednesday.

"We've been working around the clock on test methods for the virus," Shu Yuelong, director of the Chinese National Influenza Center, told Xinhua. "This virus has never occurred in China and we don't have any samples."

Xinhua contributed to the story