Rogue vaccine to blame for Liaoning flare-up
H5N1 initially diagnosed as Newcastle disease as farmers thought birds were safe
Unlicensed vaccines and misdiagnosis have been blamed for the massive outbreaks of bird flu in Liaoning province , where more than 3 million birds have been culled.
The local authorities first diagnosed the outbreak in Heishan county - where bird flu has spread to at least 18 villages - as Newcastle disease, a highly contagious viral disease of birds, China Business News reported.
It was later confirmed as H5N1 in Harbin . The report added that a vaccine - which is still undergoing clinical tests - was the culprit for the rapid spread of the disease.
Farmers in infected areas said they had already vaccinated their poultry against H5N1 but large numbers had still died.
The report said many farmers in Heishan county had used a vaccine produced by Inner Mongolia Jingyu Group - a Shanghai listed company - which offered little protection against the deadly disease. It said the company was given special approval to produce the vaccine last year by the Ministry of Agriculture due to the pressing market demand for H5N1 vaccines, but the vaccine was intended for testing in infected areas exclusively and it was not supposed to be sold.
The company issued a statement on Thursday saying its salesmen had smuggled the vaccine for sales in the market.
After the Liaoning outbreak, the company's licence to produce veterinary medicine was suspended and the company admitted some of the vaccine was sold to Heishan, although it said the amount remained small.
Cui Zhizhong, a professor of epidemiology at Shandong Agricultural University, agreed that an ineffective vaccine could be a main reason for the outbreaks.
'From our experience, the chance of having outbreaks among properly vaccinated poultry is very low,' he said yesterday.
'I read from the media report about the unlicensed vaccine. That vaccine was originally designed to immunise poultry against three diseases. When you combine a vaccine like that, it can happen that the components for immunisation for each disease may not be enough in each shot.'
Quoting the Ministry of Agriculture, the semi-official China News Service reported that an Inner Mongolia drugs factory had produced vaccines for Newcastle disease, infectious bronchitis and the H9N2 and H5N28 strains of bird flu without licence.
'The use of the vaccine by some chicken farmers in Heishan, where the outbreak had spread to at least 18 villages, has failed to immunise the poultry against the outbreak,' the report said.
Apart from Liaoning, the unlicensed vaccine was also sold to provinces including Henan and Gansu , the report said.
Meanwhile, Xiao Bingnan, director of the Hunan Veterinary Research Institute, said local authorities lacked the technology to conduct lab tests of H5N1 and it usually took 10 to 15 days to confirm the results after samples were sent to Harbin Veterinary Research Institute - the only mainland laboratory authorised to conduct tests.
'It will cause delays in a lot of things,' he said.
