South China's Guangdong Province pledged to vaccinate all its poultry to prevent bird flu outbreak, according to the provincial work meeting on prevention and control of the virus held on Thursday.

"The epidemic situation is still severe since right now there is a high chance of bird flu outbreaks due to the frequent movement of migratory birds," said Ou Guangyuan, deputy secretary of the provincial committee of the Communist Party of China.

The province will also create a system to diagnose bird flu earlier and an emergency response system. Anyone who fails to report bird flu outbreaks in time will be punished severely, Ou warned.

Guangdong tightened its supervision over the farm produce markets to prevent poultry that has not been quarantined from entering in the wake of confirmation of the suspected death from bird flu of a 32-year-old man in the province on March 5.

(Xinhua News Agency March 10, 2006)