Vietnam asks for Australian help to identify bird flu strain
HANOI - Authorities in southern Vietnam said they have requested help from experts in Australia to confirm a suspected reemergence of the lethal strain of bird flu that killed 16 people here earlier this year.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said last week it was taking for granted that the fresh outbreaks were caused by the H5N1 virus and would not send samples overseas for testing.
However, Dong Manh Hoa, director of the southern regional veterinary department in Ho Chi Minh City, insisted that it was essential to identify the strain of the disease and ascertain if it had undergone any genetic changes.
"Last week we submitted a formal request to a specialist epidemiology laboratory in Australia. We are still awaiting for a reply," he told AFP.
"It is very important for scientific purposes to identify the strain. For the central government fighting the disease is enough for them, but we need to know if there has been any biological change in the make-up of the virus."
H5N1 left 24 people dead across Asia earlier this year, with 16 of the deaths in Vietnam.
At the height of the crisis, the World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) warned that H5N1 had the potential to kill millions of people across the globe if it combined with a human influenza virus to create a new, highly contagious strain transmissible among humans.
On Thursday, Hans Troedsson, the WHO's representative to Vietnam, stressed that the government needed to identify the strain of bird flu responsible for the fresh outbreaks in the south over the past three months.
His comments were echoed Monday by Anton Rychener, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) operations in the communist nation.
"You cannot let the situation go on without determining the strain. Whether samples are sent to Australia or Hong Kong it does not matter, but it must happen," he told AFP.
Vietnam is able to identify the H5N1 strain in humans but does not have the ability to identify the virus in animals.
Meanwhile, officials dismissed a report in Monday's state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper that a man in Tien Giang -- one of two worst affected provinces where bird flu has reemerged -- could have contracted the disease.
Local authorities said a blood sample from the 41-year-old man, who died on Saturday, had been sent to the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City as a precautionary measure to rule out H5N1 as the cause of death.
The government declared on March 30 that bird flu had been contained, just 15 days after the virus has claimed its 16th fatality, prompting criticism from the WHO and FAO that it was acting prematurely and recklessly.
The UN health agency warned that it could take months, probably years to eliminate H5N1 and recommended that farmers wait three months from the last infection date before restarting production. Its advice, however, was ignored.
The agencies also criticised Hanoi for its lack of cooperation in tackling the disease and charged it with being more concerned at putting its poultry industry back on a sound footing, possibly at the cost of public health.
Agence France Press - July 05, 2004.
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