The Ministry of Agriculture said yesterday that it has punished 13 domestic institutions involved in the production and sale of fake bird flu vaccines, withdrawing its approval for them to produce vaccines for this disease.

An unnamed ministry official said it has published a list of nine officially authorized producers of four types of bird flu vaccine, and that teams have been dispatched to each of them to oversee the whole process of manufacture.

Xinhua News Agency reported today that the ministry sent nine inspection teams out "recently" to supervise vaccine production in 23 provincial areas and regulate the veterinary drug market.

Since January this year, it has monitored 57 pharmaceutical businesses and revoked 60 licenses for veterinary drug production.

Many birds have been slaughtered and vaccinated after outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in China, four of which were confirmed within the last three weeks.

There have been no confirmed human bird flu infections in the country, though one death and two cases of illness diagnosed as pneumonia have been reported by the government to the WHO as possible instances of infection.

(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2005)