Anhui Province has started an emergency mechanism for bird flu control and prevention soon after a new case of the disease was confirmed on Tuesday by the Agriculture Ministry.

　　A chicken death at a farm in Juchao District, in Chaohu City, was confirmed to be caused by H5N1, a highly pathogenic bird flu virus.

　　It was the first case after an earlier outbreak between January and March.

　　The local government has isolated the area around the farm in accordance with the Law on Animal Epidemic Prevention.

　　Ministry experts suspect the virus might be spread by migrants or wild water birds.

　　The provincial headquarters in charge of bird flu control and prevention said yesterday that countermeasures started immediately.

　　The headquarters was designed to take charge of the coordination of related departments and governments at all levels and sends officials to supervise the efforts to prevent the disease from spreading, especially to humans.

　　To ensure the implementation of the measures, the headquarters has resumed round-the-clock monitoring.

　　The provincial government has issued an urgent circular to demand local governments and related departments deal seriously with regular epidemic control measures, standardize control over poultry raising and strictly sterilize fowl farms.

　　The circular also said an epidemic monitoring system and a related information network should be established by local governments at all levels.

　　Supervision should focus on poultry farms and areas that had reported bird flu cases before and on those that were in danger.

　　According to the circular, the local governments should compensate those who suffer losses from the compulsory poultry vaccination and slaughter.

　　A responsibility system should be formed for related officials in the fight against the animal epidemic, the circular said.

　　Earlier reports said the local health authority has ordered the killing of all poultry within 3 kilometers of the farm and vaccinated all poultry within 5 kilometers of the affected area.

　　The Ministry of Agriculture has notified the Beijing office of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, and authorities in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

　　The ministry confirmed the first bird flu case caused by H5N1 on January 27, at a duck farm in Dingdang Township, in south China誷 Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

　　The epidemic then spread to several provinces and autonomous regions.

　　On March 16, the authority lifted quarantine on the last two affected areas in Lhasa of Tibet Autonomous Region and Nanning, Guangxi誷 capital city.

　　During that time, 49 cases of bird flu were confirmed and controlled.

　　So far, no human contraction has been reported in China.

　　Farms raising poultry for the Hong Kong and Macau markets in south China誷 Guangdong Province were urged yesterday to enhance precautions against contact with wild birds and those raised by other units.

　　The administration requires all poultry for the Hong Kong and Macau markets to be immunized at least twice.

　　During the outbreak of bird flu early this year, no cases were reported at more than 300 poultry farms in Guangdong.

　　(Xinhua)