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According to the UN health agency, Indonesia's
bird flu tally now stands at 139 [EPA] |
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Three dead chickens have tested positive for avian influenza, or "bird flu," in Hong Kong, prompting health officials to suspend poultry imports for 21 days.
"We feel that Hong Kong is facing a new alert for bird flu,'' York Chow, the secretary for food and health, told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The chickens, found on Monday at a farm with 60,000 birds, had the H5 virus and further tests were being done to see if they had the deadly H5N1 strain, Chow said.
He also said the farm and neighbouring poultry operations were declared part of an infected zone, and that about 80,000 birds in the area would be killed to prevent the spread of the disease.
Hong Kong's biggest bird flu outbreak was in 1997, when the H5N1 strain travelled to humans and killed six people.
It prompted the government to slaughter all 1.5 million poultry in the territory.
In 2001, the government also carried out a massive poultry slaughter, killing 306,000 birds in wholesale and retail markets and 951,000 in local farms to eradicate an outbreak of bird flu.
Indonesia fatality
The findings in Hong Kong came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that a two-year-old girl in Indonesia had died after being infected with a deadly form of bird flu.
The UN health agency said that the child, from East Jakarta, developed symptoms on November 18 and died 11 days later.
The WHO also said that a 9-year-old girl from Riau province tested positive on November but has since recovered.
The two cases take Indonesia's official tally of bird flu in humans to 139, according to WHO figures.
At least 245 people have died of bird flu worldwide since 2003, the health body says.
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