Customs staff check seized pangolin scales in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on Nov 29, 2017. [Photo/Chinanews.com] Customs officials in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, announced on Wednesday that they had intercepted 11.9 metric tons of pangolin scales smuggled from Africa, the largest volume of any single case found by border inspectors. The scales were taken from an estimated 20,000 pangolins, a species listed last year in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, which bans all international trading of pangolins and their products. Two suspects in the case, one surnamed Li from Shandong province and another, He, from Anhui province, were the subjects of arrest warrants, according to Chen Qunfang, deputy chief of Dapeng Customs, which is affiliated with the Shenzhen authorities. The case arose in July when customs officers found bags stuffed with charcoal in a container that had been declared as empty at Yantian port. The charcoal was used to cover 239 bags of pangolin scales. Lacking full information from the shipping parties on the bill of lading, customs officers spent a lot of time identifying the suspects, Chen said. Li and He were found to have made frequent money transfers totaling more than 5 million yuan ($758,000) around the time the case came to light. During an interrogation, He admitted that he helped smuggle the pangolin scales at the request of Li, officers said. Demand exists in China for pangolin scales as a food or as a traditional Chinese medicine ingredient, Chen said. Bozhou, Anhui province - He's native province - is home to one of the country's largest herbal medicine markets. The low cost of procuring pangolin scales overseas, especially from Africa, has made the illegal trade highly profitable, Chen said. The scales will be destroyed after the trial concludes. [email protected]jordan wristband rubber24hr wristbandfabric wristbands ebayrubber bracelets custom cheapcustom sweatbands no minimum
Team of physicians departs this week with domestic vaccine for killer disease?A team of Chinese health experts will depart for the Democratic Republic of Congo this week to help fight an Ebola outbreak in the west central African nation.Gao Fu, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the experts will attempt to use a vaccine developed by China to help combat the disease.The team, comprising four public health experts from the Chinese CDC and seven from other institutes, will evaluate the situation on the ground and provide support to counterparts in Congo, including virus testing, he said.They will stay in Congo for a month according to the initial plan, Gao said. The places where outbreaks occurred are far away from the capital, and transport is inconvenient. We are still discussing the details of our work there.So in the initial period of the stay the team members will try to get familiar with the situation, he said. We will seek to use the Chinese developed vaccine there to help with control and prevention of the disease, but for the present the vaccines will likely only cover Chinese living in Congo.It's also a pre-emptive intervention for China, as infectious diseases know no national borders, he said.The vaccine, jointly developed by the Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Cansinobio, a Chinese company involved in human vaccine development and production, was approved by China's top drug regulator in October.This made China the third country, after the United States and Russia, with a vaccine available to combat Ebola, according to the State Drug Administration.The vaccine-recombinant Ebola virus disease vaccine (Adenovirus type 5 vector)-is available in powder and, compared with liquid vaccines in the other two countries, is more stable, which is an advantage in transportation and use in tropical areas such as Africa, the administration said.Through Saturday, 53 confirmed or suspected Ebola cases had been reported since the most recent outbreak began on April 4. The World Health Organization said 25 people have died so far.Health experts in Congo have located more than 1,000 people who have had contact with the infected patients, and more than 680 have received Ebola vaccinations, the Associated Press reported.Gao said vaccines developed by a US company are being used in Congo.Ebola is a severe illness in humans, with fatality rates that have varied from 25 percent to 90 percent in past outbreaks, according to the WHO.There are currently no licensed treatments available for Ebola, although multiple experimental therapies are being developed.The largest outbreaks ever occurred in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea between 2014 and 2016, causing more than 11,300 deaths in the three West African countries, according to the WHO.China delivered the largest scale public health assistance in history to other countries following the outbreaks, including sending more than 1,000 medical and public health experts to the countries to help fight the disease. It provided 750 million yuan ($117 million) in assistance, according to the Foreign Ministry.Gao, from the Chinese CDC, said China will intensify cooperation with African nations to help them better cope with infectious disease prevention and control.We will fulfill our pledge to support the building of a center for disease control and prevention in Africa, including training experts in Africa, he said. We will help build a center on prevention, control and research of tropical diseases in Sierra Leone, and continue the monitoring of emerging pathogens such as Ebola in West Africa.
