A World Health Organisation inspection team says it has found no evidence of Bird Flu in humans in China. But at a news conference in Beijing inspectors said they were recommending that China order a precautionary increase in surveillance to last for the next six months. An outbreak of the Bird Flu virus has killed six people in Hong Kong over recent weeks and sparked a mass slaughter of poultry. But Chinese authorities consistently deny that the virus has been found in chickens or humans in neighbouring Guangdong. From Beijing Carrie Gracie reports.

Ever since the Hong Kong outbreak of Bird Flu in late December China has been battling allegations that it was the source of the virus. An unwillingness to allow media access to poultry farms only added to the speculation that Beijing had something to hide.

Hong Kong, which traditionally buys forty million chicken a year from the mainland, banned poultry imports and even within China itself chickens from suspect Guangdong were shunned by other provinces, crippling the local poultry industry and bankrupting many farmers. So today's WHO findings, backing up China's claim to be virus-free and praising Chinese surveillance as a model of its kind, will come as an enormous relief to the authorities.