China has set up 200 more national stations to monitor epidemics of terrestrial wild animals, bringing the total to 350, said the State Forestry Administration on Friday.

With 402 province-level monitoring stations and more than 450 ones in cities and counties to provide timely information, China saw no widely spread animal epidemics, while bird flu prevention and control were strengthened, said the administration.

China started to build a wild animal epidemic monitoring system last year, when it set up 118 national monitoring stations, which almost cover all the routes of bird migration and regions where wild animal epidemics occur frequently in the country.

The new stations were established to expand the scope and increase the density of monitoring, said the administration.

China has more than 1,200 wild animal epidemic monitoring stations of all levels up to now.

About 47,000 poultry birds died in ten outbreaks of bird flu in seven provinces on the Chinese mainland this year, with another 2.94 million fowls culled, said the Ministry of Agriculture in November.

The cases of human infection with bird flu numbered 13 this year, which was seven last year.

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2006)