Hong Kong – Something was strange about the little brown bird found dead from bird flu in one of Hong Kong’s busiest shopping districts.
The scaly-breasted munia usually lives in rural areas of the territory. Experts think it and five others may have been used in a Buddhist ritual that frees hundreds of birds to improve karma. With worries rising in Asia about a new outbreak of bird flu, officials are urging that the religious practice be stopped to protect public health.
Hong Kong is hypersensitive about disease outbreaks – especially bird flu. The illness first appeared here in 1997 when it jumped to humans and killed six people. That prompted the government to slaughter the territory’s entire poultry population of 1.5 million birds, and the disease has since largely spared this city of 6.9 million people.
But authorities remain on alert, particularly with new outbreaks in other parts of Asia.
When Hong Kong officials discovered that a scaly- breasted munia found dead on New Year’s Eve tested positive for the H5 virus, they alerted the public. A few days later, they said further tests showed the bird had the H5N1 strain.
“Six scaly-breasted munia being found dead at the same spot at one time easily leads one to suspect whether they were being released,” said Lew Young, a manager at the Chinese territory’s Mai Po bird sanctuary.
Aidia Chan, a postgraduate student in ecology who studied the Buddhist release of birds for her thesis at Hong Kong University, said the frequency of releasing birds is far more than had been suspected.
She contacted 229 religious groups in the city, and 48 said they released birds to seek blessings. The groups practice the ritual up to 18 times each year, releasing as many as 3,000 birds each time, she said.
“Based on the figures they gave me, I estimate they released a range of 400,000 to 600,000 birds in 2006,” Chan said.
One Buddhist group said many of its followers had stopped releasing birds.
“Some of the followers do not feel comfortable getting in touch with birds since bird-flu cases were reported. They were worried the birds might be infected,” said Winnie Lam, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Buddhist Cultural Association.
