Ministries Form Working Group to Prevent Animal-Human Disease Transmission

The Ministries of Health and Agriculture announced on October 13 the establishment of a working group to prevent the transmission of diseases from animals to humans. The purpose of the working group is to strengthen coordination between the two ministries to prevent the outbreak of diseases such as avian flu and swine flu within the human population. According to the Ministry of Health, if an outbreak were to occur, the working group would assemble a team of experts, hold regular meetings to monitor the situation, report on the outbreak, and create a lab for researching the epidemiology of the outbreak.

From May through August 2005, the Ministry of Agriculture reported outbreaks of avian flu in western Qinghai province, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and in the Tibet Autonomous Region. An outbreak of swine flu in Sichuan province in July and August 2005 led to 215 cases of transmission to humans; 39 people died from the disease.