As many as 60,000 chickens dead from mystery virus in Vietnam
HANOI - Agriculture officials met to work out measures to contain transmission of a mystery virus that has killed as many as 60,000 chickens in southern Vietnam.
The disease first emerged last week in the southern provinces of Tien Giang and Long An but has subsequently spread to other Mekong Delta provinces and Ho Chi Minh City as a result of panic selling by local farmers.
Around 1,600 kilogrammes of chickens felled by the virus have been buried in specially dug pits in Ho Chi Minh City over the last few days, and city authorities have banned import of chickens from Tien Giang and Long An.
Agriculture inspectors have been deployed to local markets in the southern business capital and the two provinces to monitor poultry sales and to seize and destroy all dead chickens.
Measures have also been put in place Wednesday to prevent the transportation of chickens to other provinces. However, tens of thousands have already been sold to traders outside Tien Giang and Long An by desperate farmers.
"We estimate that eight to 10 percent of around 600,000 chickens that have been sold have died," said Nguyen Van Hung, an official from the Long An provincial government's veterinary department.
Officials have refused to speculate on whether the virus could be the highly contagious bird flu that killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997, and which triggered panic in South Korea following an outbreak there last month.
"We are still waiting the result of today's meeting of veterinary officials in Long An and Tien Giang, but if they are not able to identify the virus we will have to send blood samples overseas for analysis," Hung said.
Farmers in the two provinces are reeling from the virus which has devastated many small poultry farms.
Vietnam does not export any chickens.
Agence France Presse - January 07, 2004.
|