Vietnam confirms new bird flu case
HO CHI MINH CITY - Asia's deadly bird flu has infected a 21-year-old Vietnamese man and possibly his younger sister, officials say, as experts wrap up an international conference on fighting the resilient virus.
Tests confirmed the man from Thai Binh province, 110 km (70 miles) southeast of Hanoi, had the highly contagious H5N1 strain which has killed 13 people in Vietnam's latest outbreaks.
His 14-year-old sister was being tested for the virus after she fell ill with a severe fever, Dr Pham Van Diu told Reuters on Friday.
"Now we are disinfecting his home area. It is not clear how he was infected, but during Tet people everywhere ate chickens," Diu said, referring to the Lunar New Year holiday this month when poultry is traditionally served.
Bird flu experts meeting in Ho Chi Minh City say the virus, which has killed 46 people in Asia since it erupted at the end of 2003, is now endemic in parts of the region despite the slaughter of 140 million birds.
They no longer talk about eradicating the disease, but of containing it before it mutates into a form which can pass between humans and sets off a pandemic that could kill millions.
Vietnam, battling fresh outbreaks in 35 of its 64 provinces this year, has appealed for technical and financial help at the U.N.-sponsored meeting of scientists, animal health officials and donor governments and agencies.
Foreign donors have been criticised for an "alarming" lack of commitment to fighting a virus the World Health Organization says poses the "gravest possible danger" to the world population.
They gave only $18 million (9.4 million pounds) last year, far below the $100 million needed to detect and react quickly to outbreaks.
Up to $300 million is now needed to boost surveillance systems, equip labs and vaccinate birds in six contaminated countries and to aid monitoring in four to five countries at risk, said FAO animal health chief Joseph Domenech.
"That does not include subsidies, compensation and incentives for a long-term restructuring of the industry. Those funds are several hundreds of millions of dollars," he told Reuters.
He said it was up to affected countries to draw up specific aid requests after the meeting, where donors such as the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan were to speak on Friday.
Farming overhaul
A key issue debated at the meeting was how to overhaul Asia's open-air farms, where millions of families live alongside their poultry, fuelling the spread of the disease.
The WHO wants recommendations that farmers stop raising animals together and keep birds in pens so they can't mix with wild birds or ducks believed to be natural carriers of the virus.
But implementing biosecurity measures -- everything from building closed chicken sheds and erecting bird netting to chemical baths and vaccines -- is hugely expensive in poor countries such as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia.
But the FAO is adamant that no matter how big the task ahead, money must be found and age-old farming practices reformed.
"If we want to control avian influenza there may be people who lose their livelihoods," said Domenech, but that may be offset by growth in other sectors if bird flu is brought to heel.
By Darren Schuettler - Reuters - February 25, 2005.
Vietnam says bird-flu resources insufficient
Vietnam is hampered in its fight against avian influenza by a lack of resources and training and by large populations of ducks, the government said, as a new human case of bird-flu infection was reported in the country.
Vietnam needs help in diagnosing the disease and in researching the disease's transmission route and virulence, the government said in a report to a three-day regional conference on bird flu in Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnam has a ``lack of trained and experienced staff, especially at the grassroots level,'' the report said. ``Laboratories operate under considerable restraints of insufficient funding and inadequate equipment and limited supplies and reagents.''
Vietnam has recorded 44 human cases of bird-flu infections since the end of 2003, with 32 deaths, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat said on Feb. 23. The World Health Organization has identified 13 probable cases and 12 fatalities since December, and a hospital patient tested positive yesterday for the virus, said Nguyen Duc Hien, director of Hanoi's Institute for Clinical Research in Tropical Medicine.
The latest human case is of a 21-year-old man from the northern Vietnamese province of Thai Binh, according to Pham Van Diu, director of the Thai Binh Preventive Medicine Center. The man is in critical condition at the Institute for Clinical Research in Tropical Medicine in Hanoi, where he was admitted Feb. 22, according to institute director Nguyen Duc Hien.
The man's 14-year-old sister has been hospitalized in Thai Binh with a fever, and will be transferred to the Hanoi hospital today for testing, Diu said.
Farming System
Vietnam's ability to slow or halt the spread of the bird-flu virus is hurt by its farming system, which consists primarily of small household farms, and by the country's large duck populations, according to the government report.
About 80 percent of Vietnamese households raise poultry, and only about 10 percent of the country's total poultry population is raised on an industrial scale, Agriculture Minister Phat told journalists on Wednesday.
``The majority of households raise poultry in their backyards,'' said Phat.
Duck Population
Before Vietnam's bird-flu outbreak began, the country had a duck population of about 69 million, or about a quarter of its total poultry population, according to a February 2004 estimate by the agricultural attache's office at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. The number of ducks and geese in Vietnam has reached about 59 million, Phat said Wednesday.
FAO studies on bird flu ``strongly suggest that ducks have an important role as silent carriers and conveyors of H5N1,'' according to a report presented yesterday to the Ho Chi Minh City conference by Frands Dolberg, an associate professor at the University of Aarhus in Denmark.
``Recently we discovered that ducks are infected and test positive but they do not show the symptoms of the disease,'' said Phat. ``We consider this as a source for keeping the virus alive and spreading it to others.''
Vietnam will cull an entire duck flock if one duck tests positive for H5N1, and will ban the breeding of ducks until at least June 30, he said.
Global Aid
Vietnam asked this month for global aid in fighting bird flu, which has caused the death or culling of more than 45 million poultry nationwide, according to the agriculture ministry.
An ``alarming lack of commitment among the donors and also among affected governments'' may have tripled the amount of money needed to control the spread of the virus among poultry, according to Samuel Jutzi, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization's animal production and health division.
The World Health Organization, which hasn't confirmed a new bird-flu case in Vietnam since last month, has recorded nine examples of bird-flu cases among family members since 2003, according to Shigeru Omi, regional director for the Western Pacific for the World Health Organization.
The WHO has concluded that ``it is very difficult to rule out human-to-human transmission'' in one case in Thailand and in one case in Vietnam, Omi said Wednesday at the conference in Ho Chi Minh City.
``In both cases, the relative of the index case had very close and intimate care for the first case,'' Omi told journalists. ``It seems as of now that there needs to be a lot of close contact if human-to-human transmission takes place. So this is very limited. It's not efficient human-to-human transmission.''
By Jason Folkmanis - Bloomberg - February 25, 2005.
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