A veterinary research institute in Harbin has recently donated blue-ear disease vaccines for 800,000 pigs to five snow-hit provinces in a bid to prevent the potential outbreak after the recent blizzard.

A staff member of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute makes a blue-ear disease vaccine in Harbin, capital of northeastern China's Heilongjiang Province, in this photo, published on Saturday, February 23, 2008.

The Harbin Daily Saturday reported the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute's recent move is a quick response to the call from China Animal Health Products Association since spring is the season of a high occurrence in the blue-ear disease also known as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome.

The donation from Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, worth two million yuan or about 280,000 US dollars, will soon arrive in the five disaster-stricken provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui and Guizhou.The first batch of vaccines has already been sent to Hunan Province.

Blue-ear disease was first discovered in the United States in 1987 and spread to China in mid 1990s.

China first spotted a more virulent form of the pig disease in the summer of 2006 and identified it as a mutated highly pathogenic strain in January of 2007.

(CRI February 23, 2008)