Re: _|VIETNAM: H5N1 IN POULTRY, UPDATE|_
[AVIAN INFLUENZA, POULTRY, VIETNAM, VACCINES] Sustainable vaccination strategy a must to control bird flu in VN
(19-06-2008)
Experts talk to Viet Nam News about strategies needed to tackle bird flu on the sideline of a three-day international conference on avian influenza research and policies, which ended yesterday.
Through the surveillance system established when the disease first occurred in Viet Nam in 2003, the number of bird flu outbreaks this year and in 2007 showed a considerable downward trend compared to 2004 and 2005.
This achievement is thanks to the strong determination and commitment of the Government in taking strict measures to prevent and control the disease, especially the role of vaccination and poultry transport management.
However, statistics show that although recent outbreaks are small in scale and few in numbers, they are scattered over many different areas throughout the north, the centre and the south.
This means the risk of a pandemic?s returning remains high and requires disease control methods to continue.
Testing of poultry, especially waterfowl, samples show that the H5N1 virus circulation rate in poultry is still high. Therefore, vaccination still plays a crucial role. What we need to do is to have a sustainable vaccination strategy to maintain control over bird flu.
The current Government goals regarding this disease include keeping the frequency and scale of outbreaks at low level, preventing the transmission of the virus to humans and reducing the burden of vaccination on the State.
The FAO believes that Viet Nam should continue to vaccinate and the programme will probably be needed for the next three to five years or longer.
But this strategy is costly because is has to be done on such a large scale. What we?d like to see is the scale of the vaccination decreasing. If less vaccinations were used, Viet Nam would be less dependent on vaccinations.
However, as most farmers don?t know about biosecurity, if vaccinations were withdrawn, the spread of disease would come back and start significant outbreaks like 2004 and 2005. Therefore what we need is surveillance and to improve surveillance.
One of the biggest challenges as well as improving surveillance is a change of farming systems. It should not just be a prescriptive, "Right, everyone should change." It has to be driven by processes, by consulting with the farmers from their point of view. Things that will help the farmers move in that direction are incentives where profits are involved.
So, there is push and pull. They will be pushed by perhaps the legislation but they also will be pulled by the fact that they have access to markets.
Perhaps as consumers still may be uneasy with chicken but they are assured that it is of good quality, and for it to be good quality it might cost a little more in a secure market chain, but then the consumer has peace of mind, the farmer feels that he?s doing a service, and that he?s obviously getting the profit incentive to do that.
Barring that sort of private sector development I don?t think that the policy saying we?re going to restructure the poultry industry will really go ahead: we need the drivers.
People (in Viet Nam) seem to be less worried about the risks to themselves of the disease. They certainly don?t seem to be even considering the possibility of the pandemic. They are taking some precautions, to wash their hands and to handle poultry carefully, but they are not taking very many precautions in the way they keep the birds to prevent the disease from spreading in the birds themselves, and they are engaging in quite risky practices in terms of what they eat.
Something else that was extremely interesting found in studies being done in Viet Nam is that repeated mass media messages are losing their effectiveness. People have said that they hear the messages but they don?t really think it?s something meant for them. They feel that they will manage in their own way, and that repeatedly hearing the same messages over and over again does not really have an impact on them.
One of the conclusions from this meeting was that it?s important to have much more personal discussion with communities about how they see risks and how they are dealing with the disease rather than constantly giving them the same message over time.
Everywhere you go, over time people?s perception of risk changes. Thailand, for instance, had a huge market shock with the first wave of outbreaks. But with lots of reassurance, publicity, and certification of livestock products, that shock has now diminished. It?s been the same in Viet Nam.
With the first outbreaks, it was a big shock and people stopped eating poultry. Now, some people are not eating it but for most people that panic is gone.
To many people in Viet Nam, avian influenza is a part of life, it?s not unusual, so we have to think about more direct ways to communicate with people, ways that are more related to their lives, and involve listening to and talking to people.
We may live with this challenge for a very long time. Viet Nam is one of those countries that are really thinking about long-term solutions. These solutions involve good communication with people about what they?re willing to do and what they?re not, and make poultry production and poultry markets safer. And more importantly, poor people should never be discouraged to make a living from poultry. ? VNS
-
------
