A China-Laos Railway international freight train loaded with goods departed from Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province on Wednesday, bound for Vientiane in Laos, marking this railway's cumulative cargo transport volume exceeding 80 million tonnes since its launch on Dec 3, 2021, including more than 18 million tonnes of cross-border shipments.
China Railway Kunming Group Co., Ltd., which operates the railway line, said such cross-border freight train operations have expanded significantly.
"Since the launch of China-Laos Railway, a total of 71,000 freight trains have operated along this route. Daily cross-border services have grown from just two at the start to 23, while the range of goods has surged from a handful of items like fertilizers and rubber, to more than 3,800, including chemicals, fresh produce, textiles, electrical products, minerals and agricultural byproducts," said Shan Fan, a staff member from Kunming Logistics Center under the company.
Annual cargo volumes have risen steadily. A total of 5.64 million tonnes have been transported so far this year. The railway's freight service now serves 19 countries and regions, including Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh, with over 20,000 international freight trains dispatched.
China-Laos Railway transports over 80 mln tonnes of cargo since operation
The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) on Monday called for enhanced surveillance of viruses of animal origin, as recent hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks have sparked global alarm.
The 93rd General Session of the World Assembly of Delegates of the WOAH kicked off on Monday in Paris, France. WOAH's Director General Emmanuelle Soubeyran and other experts attending the session stressed that strengthening the surveillance of animal-borne viruses and improving early detection capabilities are crucial to reducing public health risks.
Citing a recent WOAH report, Soubeyran noted that approximately 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases worldwide originate from animals. She emphasized the importance of intensifying research into cross-species transmission pathways of viruses.
"What is important, maybe for us, is to really understand how there is a jump from wildlife to humans or to farm animals. So that's very important to understand, to make research, to understand how this spillover is appearing," she said.
In a recent statement, WOAH said that the hantavirus is an animal-borne virus primarily hosted by rodents. It said that effective rodent management based on an integrated ecological approach is an important measure to reduce the risk of human infection. Continuous monitoring and early detection mechanisms, it added, are essential for mitigating public health risks.
"It has a zoonotic origin and it's quite fatal in humans. There are different serotypes or strains of hantavirus and not each strain is affecting humans, but only one of them is transmissible from human to human. So surveillance is important because of the early detection and to avoid fatalities in humans and to guide the communities to take precautionary measures and to invest in health emergencies on the human side," said Tahreem Khalid, Animal Health Information Officer at WOAH.
Through enhanced animal surveillance, improved laboratory capacity, and facilitated information sharing, the organization aims to strengthen countries’ abilities to respond to risks and promote cross-sectoral collaboration under the "One Health" framework.
World Organization for Animal Health urges tighter monitoring of animal-borne viruses
