Trial run for regional slaughter of chickens
Health chief says pilot scheme in bird flu war to be introduced next year
A pilot programme of regional slaughtering of chickens will be launched next year, the health secretary said yesterday.
York Chow Yat-ngok said after attending a ministerial meeting on avian flu in Bangkok that results of a consultation exercise over the controversial plan for centralised slaughtering of live poultry would be made public in the next two months.
About 10,000 submissions were received during the three-month public consultation, which ended in July.
He said the government was considering whether to introduce a centralised slaughterhouse or regional slaughterhouses.
'In Bangkok we know there is central slaughtering of chickens in the city and we are moving towards that direction to minimise the risk as much as possible,' he said.
'We will probably start off with a pilot [programme] somewhere in some of the government premises. So we need to seek funds for conversion, training of management and so on.
'The planning will be done as soon as possible and hopefully we will go to the Legco for approval next year.'
Dr Chow was speaking on the sidelines of a World Health Organisation meeting of 14 ministers from the Asian region on ways to prevent and control bird flu outbreaks.
He said Hong Kong had pledged to give technical support to countries in the region in terms of investigation, surveillance and expertise.
Hong Kong would unveil its plan to deal with a bird flu pandemic next week.
'We do have a preparation plan for a flu pandemic,' he said.
'We want to ensure that we are prepared for different scenarios; if there is an infected chicken, if there is an infected human and if there is going to be a human-to-human spread, [we have to know] how we will be dealing with it.
'In case of the infection originating from Hong Kong, how [will] we deal with it? If it is coming from outside, how are we going to control the importation of such diseases? We have to plan for different scenarios.'
Director of Health Lam Ping-yan warned yesterday of drug resistance if flu vaccines were overused.
He said it was difficult to make vaccines available to everyone.
Dr Lam said the use of flu vaccines could not ensure protection against the virus.
'But we have to identify the high-risk groups. Medical workers who are in the first line of defence need to receive vaccines before they can effectively protect the health of the community,' he said.
Permanent Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Carrie Yau Tsang Ka-lai said Hong Kong would not ease measures aimed at stopping outbreaks of avian flu, such as the regular cleaning of wet markets for hygiene purposes.
But the mainland's Vice-Minister for Health, Wang Longde , said he believed the risk of an outbreak of avian flu or influenza was actually quite low as there were no recent reports of outbreaks in the country.
