Borders tight to control plague

By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-06 07:49

Fearing pneumonic plague spreading across the Sino-Russian border, Russia has tightened security on part of its border with China after an outbreak in Qinghai province.

But no signs of infection have so far been detected near the border, a spokesperson for the customs service in the Transbaikal area, to the east of Siberia's Lake Baikal, told Russia-based RIA Novosti news agency.

Qinghai is an inland province which is hundreds of km from the Russian border.

The town of Ziketan in northwest Qinghai province has been sealed off in a region of 3,500 sq km after the outbreak was reported in late July. Twelve people have been infected, three of whom have died. Another patient remains in critical condition. But no other infections were reported as of yesterday, said Dong Fukui, deputy government chief of Hainan prefecture that administers Ziketan.

Russia's chief sanitary official Gennady Onishchenko had advised Russians earlier to avoid traveling to China's "problem regions," according to RIA Novosti.

Transbaikal has historically been a plague hot spot, due to its proximity to China and Mongolia, according to the head of the local department of national consumer rights regulator Ropotrebnadzor.

The Ministry of Health yesterday said the disease is unlikely to spread from the epidemic center, but some local residents of the remote town of 10,000 people of Xinghai county in the prefecture were trying to leave.

Local residents told the Associated Press that many immigrants from other provinces have already left after they heard that another person died of the plague. A local food seller, surnamed Han, said the residents escaped with food, water and their donkeys.

"Some of my hometown folks left. They are afraid of the pneumonic plague," a businessman from neighboring Sichuan province who works in the town told AFP yesterday.

"There are checkpoints in the street and the roads are strictly controlled. I heard many migrant workers have left. They may go back to their hometown," he said.

The vast high-altitude area is sparsely inhabited, mainly by Tibetan herders.

The local government yesterday asked health authorities within the province to tighten control measures to prevent the disease from spreading, as seven infected patients still remain hospitalized.

The patients were mostly relatives of the first man who died, a 32-year-old herdsman, officials from the local government said.

Health authorities urged people who had visited Ziketan on or after July 16 to seek immediate help if they developed a cough or fever.

Medical staff were also tracking down people who had been in close contact with the patients, but no new infections have been reported.

The disease is unlikely to spread from the epidemic center since the government's actions against the pneumonic plague have been effective, said medical experts who rushed to Qinghai after the outbreak.

"There is no need to worry about the infection if you travel to Qinghai, not to speak of panic," Professor Liang Wannian, deputy director of the Emergency Office of the Ministry of Health, told Xinhua News Agency.

Wang Hu, chief of Qinghai Provincial Disease Control Bureau, said the plague is under control when all infected are quarantined, because the disease is spread through infectious respiratory secretions within a radius of three meters.