VIETNAM - Faces high risk of bird flu return

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VIETNAM FACES HIGH RISK OF BIRD FLU RETURN: OFFICIAL
August 2, 2006 (Xinhua)

Vietnam is encourtering high risk of bird flu reoccurrence amid outbreaks in some neighbor countries and potential weather conditions favorable for development of bird flu viruses, the local newspaper Youth said on Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted Bui Ba Bang, deputy minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, as saying that the high risk is fueled by recent bird flu outbreaks in neighbor countries, future stronger raising of poultry to serve big traditional festivals in late 2006 and early 2007, and coming cold weather conditions which favor the development of the viruses,

Other contributing factors include the unavailability of bird flu vaccines for white-featured ducks and coming season of migratory birds, he said.

Vietnam is intensifying disease surveillance, prevention of poultry smuggling, and vaccination among fowls nationwide, the newspaper said.

According to the agriculture ministry's Department of Animal Health, the country, which has so far this year vaccinated 98.4 million chickens and 35.2 million ducks, plans to complete the vaccination by October.

Vietnam had a total poultry population of 254 million by late 2002, and it has annually grown by an average of 6.5 percent. Bird flu outbreaks, starting in the country in December 2003, have killed and led to the forced culling of dozens of millions of fowls.

The last outbreak of bird flu among poultry in Vietnam was in December 2005, the department said.

Source: http://english.people.com.cn/200608/...02_289236.html

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VIETNAM - Faces high risk of bird flu return

OUTBREAKS OF BIRD FLU FAN FEARS OF NEW SPREAD
August 4, 2006 (Reuters)

New outbreaks of bird flu in Thailand and Laos are fanning fears the disease is flaring up again in Asia, although concerns the virus is mutating in Indonesia have subsided.

Experts in Vietnam, where the H5N1 virus has killed 42 people, worry it will be the next country to see a re- emergence of the disease after a seven- month lull.

And there were signs Thursday bird flu may be spreading into central Thailand after outbreaks in the north and northeast exposed weaknesses in the country's defenses against a virus known to have killed 134 people.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization urged governments to be vigilant against the virus still circulating in poultry three years after it swept across much of Asia.

"Countries in the region are doing their best, but there are limited resources available where animal health surveillance is concerned," said FAO spokeswoman Aphaluk Bhatiasevi.

But concerns about a cluster of human cases in Indonesia eased after preliminary tests cleared six people in the province of North Sumatra of bird flu.

The group lived in the same district where as many as seven members of an extended family died from bird flu in May, but tests showed they had common flu.

Such cases fan fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between people, even though there is no evidence that it has happened yet.

Indonesia, where the virus has killed another 42 people, has been criticized for not doing enough to fight the disease endemic in birds in about two-thirds of the country's provinces.

The government has shunned mass culling, citing a lack of money for compensation and impracticality in a country with millions of backyard fowl.

In Vietnam, where the government has fought the virus by vaccinating millions of birds, officials said a failure to control its waterfowl flocks made it vulnerable.

The number of ducks, which can be "silent carriers" of the virus, and other waterfowl has doubled to more than eight million since February despite a government ban on waterfowl hatching.

"We are unable to control the waterfowl stock," Agriculture Ministry Husbandry Department head Nguyen Dang Vang told the Vanguard newspaper. Adding to the risk, wild birds believed to carry H5N1 will soon migrate from the north.

Worried about the region's defenses, a senior FAO official was dispatched to Laos this week to assess its surveillance efforts after bird flu was found last month on a farm south of the capital Vientiane, its first outbreak since 2004. He will do the same next week.

Thai officials have vowed to close the gaps and assist their neighbours in fending off the virus. But that effort suffered a setback when Laos abruptly canceled a bird flu meeting with Thai officials in Vientiane scheduled for Thursday.

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VIETNAM - Faces high risk of bird flu return

THAILAND, VIETNAM PROBE POSSIBLE HUMAN H5N1 CASES
August 3, 2006 (CIDRAP News)

Concern about H5N1 avian influenza intensified in Thailand and Vietnam today as health officials reported more suspected human cases, but Indonesian officials said six people in two suspected case clusters in North Sumatra tested negative.

In Thailand, a 9-year-old girl from Lop Buri province died yesterday of suspected avian flu, the Bangkok Post reported. She is from the same province where a suspected case was reported in a 61-year-old woman yesterday.

A provincial health official, Pranor Khamthieng, told the Post the girl had initially tested negative for the H5N1 virus, but her symptoms suggested the disease. The Thai News Agency reported that the girl suffered fever, sore throat, and severe cough for 2 days before she was hospitalized with breathing difficulties. Samples were sent to a lab in Bangkok for a more thorough investigation, the Post reported.

The Thai News Agency said the girl?s family raises about 20 fighting cocks, but provincial authorities inspected her house and nearby areas and found that none had died suspiciously.

Elsewhere in Thailand, the Post reported today that two patients in Chachoengsao province, east of Bangkok, have been isolated at Ban Pho Hospital because of suspected avian flu. Doctors at the hospital told the Post that initial tests indicated the patients had regular influenza and that they were awaiting the results of avian flu tests.

One doctor said the patients, a 17-year-old boy and a 42-year-old woman, had touched ducks at a slaughterhouse where they both worked. A local livestock official, however, said no bird flu outbreaks had been reported on chicken farms in the province, according to the Post.

As of yesterday, the Thai Health Ministry reported that 164 patients from 21 provinces were under surveillance for possible avian flu.

Thailand?s only confirmed avian flu case so far this year was in a 17-year-old boy who died of the disease Jul 24 in Phichit province. The entire country is on bird flu alert after outbreaks surfaced in July in the northern and central provinces, ending a nearly 8-month hiatus.

In Vietnam ? which hasn't had a confirmed human H5N1 case since November 2005?Bloomberg News reported today that health authorities are awaiting tests on a man from the southern province of Kien Giang, on the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta. The report said the man was hospitalized with lung damage and a high fever about a week after eating duck.

Cao Bao Van, head of the molecular biology laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, told Bloomberg that test results may be reported over the weekend.

Vietnamese news media have reported that ducks from two households in the southern province of Tay Ninh recently died suspiciously and test results were pending. Tay Ninh is also on the Cambodian border.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, preliminary tests came back negative for H5N1 in six patients from the same district in Sumatra where the world?s first lab-confirmed human-to-human transmission of avian flu occurred in a family cluster, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today.

The suspected illnesses in the six patients had raised fears of more human-to-human transmission, because the group appeared to include two family clusters. Of the six patients, three were children: two siblings, aged 10 and 6, and an 18-month-old neighbor.

An Associated Press report yesterday had said there were a total of seven patients in the two possible clusters. But AFP reported today that a local hospital official in Kabanjahe village said it appeared that one patient had been counted twice.

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