Vietnam vigilant against bird flu despite new year fete
HANOI - Vietnam remains on high alert to contain bird flu despite ongoing Lunar New Year celebrations, after a 13-year-old boy died taking the death toll from the virus to at least six.
Millions of people were busy with lavish family meals on Sunday, keeping up several days of festivities to usher in the Year of the Monkey.
Streets of the capital were near empty as many people had left for their native villages. Since last Wednesday and until Tuesday, virtually the entire country is at a standstill.
But the health authorities have been at work, worried by a virus that has caused an Asia-wide health scare, the World Health Organisation spokesman Bob Dietz said.
"Actually, we are having full contacts with people here. We are impressed by the way the government has responded", he told AFP, denying the Tet period was making it harder to monitor the situation.
"This is a poor country. They have very little resources with which to play. But they are making great efforts, definitely."
A teenager who tested positive for the H5N1 virus died on Thursday in Ho Chi Minh City's Paediatric Hospital No. 2.
His death from avian influenza was the first to have been confirmed in southern Vietnam. The five previous victims were all from the north, baffling officials given poultry in the south had been hit badly by the virus.
An eight-year-old girl from the former Saigon has also tested positive for H5N1 and is in critical condition at the city's Hospital of Tropical Diseases.
In Hanoi, two sisters also died Thursday from severe respiratory illnesses. Their brother died on January 14 and is among a number of people suspected but not confirmed to have been killed by the virus.
According to Dietz, in addition to the six deaths, nine cases are classified as "possible" H5N1 and 27 are awaiting classification.
Seventeen people suspected to have contracted bird flu remain hospitalised in Hanoi.
Experts say Vietnam has learned a lot from the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS (news - web sites)) last year. Five people died from the disease in Vietnam out of 63 infected.
"They are much more medically prepared. The reporting system has strengthened and the public opinion is much more aware of health threats", Dietz said.
According to figures given to WHO by the government, 23 of Vietnam's 64 provinces and cities have reported outbreaks. The real figure is however widely thought to be higher.
At least 2.9 millions chickens have died from the virus or were culled. And as much as 445 outbreaks have been reported in the country since December 27.
The authorities have instructed that all chickens within a three kilometre radius from where infected birds are detected must be slaughtered and that a 10-kilometre isolation zone around the areas be set up.
On Friday, the United Nations (news - web sites) Food and Agriculture Organization (news - web sites) said it was concerned that Vietnam was not culling enough chickens to contain the disease, blaming notably insufficient financial compensation to farmers.
Japan said Saturday that it would donate 20 million dollars worth of medicine to Vietnam to help tackle the disease.
Thailand, Cambodia, Japan and South Korea (news - web sites) are also battling bird flu outbreaks. A weaker strain, H5N2, has been found at a farm in Taiwan.
No confirmed deaths from H5N1 have been reported outside of Vietnam, but on Friday a Thai man died in hospital from suspected bird flu.
Thailand said it would host a half-day ministerial meeting in Bangkok on Wednesday, to which it has invited affected and importing countries and international experts.
Agence France Presse - January 24, 2004.
UN concerned over inadequate chicken cull in Vietnam
HANOI: The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says it is concerned Vietnam is not culling enough chickens to contain an outbreak of bird flu that has killed five people.
Around 2.5 million birds have been slaughtered or died from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza in the country, but many more need to be killed to prevent transmission of the virus, according to the UN agency.
"I am still somewhat concerned," said Anton Rychener, FAO head in Vietnam, when asked if the mass cull of all chickens in affected areas was actually being carried out.
"The government is only paying around 5,000 dong (30 cents) for a culled bird, but the market value is more like 50,000 dong, That's why we are seeing a reluctance to carry out the cull."
The authorities have instructed that all chickens within a three kilometre radius from where infected birds are detected must be slaughtered and that a 10-kilometre isolation zone around the areas be set up.
Rychener, however, said some poultry owners were reluctant to kill their sources of income or were unaware of the seriousness of the disease, which has killed at least five people in Vietnam.
"We are disseminating information and we are also putting together a compensation package to reconstitute flocks for those affected," he told AFP.
The UN official also said he was aware of reports that there had been a bird flu outbreak on a poultry farm in July last year in the northern province of Vinh Phuc which was covered up by the Vietnamese government.
State media reported last week that another outbreak occurred at the same time at a poultry research centre in Hanoi.
"There is little we can do about this now," said Rychener.
Disease control experts, however, say failure to have tackled the virus then could have allowed it to spread though chicken populations, altering its genetic make-up along the way and possibly becoming more pathogenic.
The government says 19 of Vietnam's 64 provinces and cities have reported outbreaks, but the real figure is thought to be much higher.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said Thursday it fears that as the virus spreads across Asia it could mutate into a far more lethal form.
It has also warned that the world could face another influenza pandemic if H5N1 swaps genes with a common flu virus, creating a lethal pathogen that could spread around the globe within months.
Only the swift culling of 1.4 million birds in Hong Kong during an outbreak of H5N1 there in 1997 that killed six people averted a global health crisis, according to the WHO.
No deaths among the human population have been reported outside of Vietnam, but Thailand's government admitted Friday that some people could have been infected with the virus.
Outbreaks of bird flu have already led to the culling or deaths nearly two million chickens in South Korea, 35,000 in Japan and 55,000 in Taiwan, which is coping with the H5N2 strain of the disease.
"It is fast becoming a fact of life that H5N1 has become entrenched in the region," Bob Dietz, the WHO's spokesman in Vietnam, said Friday.
"We fear it may also only be a question of time before it gets more aggressive and alters its form to transmit from people to people."
The five victims in Vietnam are all thought to have been infected after coming into contact with droppings from sick birds. Seventeen suspected cases are being treated in hospital in Hanoi.
Agence France Presse - January 23, 2004.
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