Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

[MHSC]

Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

January 15, 2007 07:06am

Article from: Agence France-Presse
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<!-- END Story Toolbar --><!-- Split page --> <!-- Lead Content Panel --> BIRD flu has killed poultry in a seventh province in southern Vietnam with state officals describing the spread of the disease across the Mekong Delta as "alarming".

More than 130 ducks have died of the virus in Soc Trang province in recent days, Government-run television reported, hours after officials said more than 800 ducks have also died of the H5N1 bird flu strain in Tra Vinh province.


"The bird flu situation is becoming more and more complicated and alarming in the Mekong Delta," the state television report said, quoting a Ministry of Agriculture statement.


Vietnam has reported no new human cases since November 2005 of the disease that killed 42 people in the country between 2003 and 2005, but a new wave of outbreaks, mostly on small poultry farms, started in December.


The World Health Organisation, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Vietnamese Government last week dispatched an expert team to the region to assess the situation.


Vietnamese animal health workers have slaughtered thousands of ducks and chickens and vaccinated nearly two million animals in recent weeks in an effort to contain the latest series of outbreaks, the Vietnam News Agency reported.


Bird flu has now struck scores of poultry farms in the southern provinces of Ca Mau, Bac Lieu, Hau Giang, Kien Giang, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh and Soc Trang, the Ministry of Agriculture said.


Health experts warn that the bird flu risk, like that of other respiratory ailments, increases in the winter months and around the mid-February Tet New Year festival, when poultry consumption and the movement of people rises.


The global death toll from bird flu since 2003 stands at 161, but epidemiologists fear bird flu could trigger a global pandemic if it were to mutate and become easily transmitted between humans.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21060471-401,00.html#

 

[rutsuyasun]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

Why has bird flu been spreading again in Southern Vietnam? They had eradicated it so thoroughly in the last outbreak, culling endless numbers of chickens. Key word there: "chickens"

Bird flu spreads in southern Vietnam

Another Vietnamese province has reported a bird flu outbreak, bringing the number of provinces to six since December, all in the southern Mekong Delta. Authorities in Tra Vinh said Friday that the H5N1 strain of the virus had been discovered after 800 ducks had died in Ngoc Ho hamlet of Cau Ke district.

The lethal strain killed 42 people in Vietnam between 2003 and 2005.

The five other provinces that have reported a recurrence of the epidemic are Ca Mau, Bac Lieu, Hau Giang, Vinh Long, and Kien Giang. The agriculture ministry?s Animal Health Department said no new cases had been found in two thirds of the affected communes for at least 10 days now.

Over 2 million fowl had been vaccinated as of Friday in the country?s latest vaccination campaign. Inspection teams had been sent to provinces and cities across the country to reinforce preventive measures.

New vaccine

Hans Troedsson, head of the World Health Organization office in Hanoi, said: ?There is no effective vaccine for ducks; that?s why bird flu has reemerged in southern Vietnam, mostly among ducks.?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was supporting Vietnam in testing a new vaccine for ducks.

A joint mission with representatives from the WHO, FAO, and the Vietnamese ministries of health and agriculture was monitoring the fight against the epidemic in newly affected provinces.

http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=24223

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

No effective vaccine for ducks???

Can one of our scientists explain why?

Also, Ducks don't normally get H5N1, per Dr. Niman's post at
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=58108&highlight=ducks#post58108

.

 

[MHSC]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

Also, Ducks don't normally get H5N1.

This is the second time this week we have heard about sick ducks, Ramli had sick ducks and now in Vietnam.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

I wonder what is different about the strain?

Why are ducks normally immune to an infection?

.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol12no01/05-1024.htm

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]...Ongoing outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in migratory waterfowl, domestic poultry, and humans in Asia during the summer of 2005 present a continuing, protean pandemic threat. We review the zoonotic source of highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses and their genesis from their natural reservoirs. The acquisition of novel traits, including lethality to waterfowl, ferrets, felids, and humans, indicates an expanding host range. The natural selection of nonpathogenic viruses from heterogeneous subpopulations cocirculating in ducks contributes to the spread of H5N1 in Asia. Transmission of highly pathogenic H5N1 from domestic poultry back to migratory waterfowl in western China has increased the geographic spread. The spread of H5N1 and its likely reintroduction to domestic poultry increase the need for good agricultural vaccines. In fact, the root cause of the continuing H5N1 pandemic threat may be the way the pathogenicity of H5N1 viruses is masked by cocirculating influenza viruses or bad agricultural vaccines.......[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Source[/FONT]


.
Influenza A viruses are perpetuated in the wild birds of the world, predominantly in waterfowl, in which the 16 subtypes (which differ by 30% in their hemagglutinin [HA] nucleotide homology) coexist in perfect harmony with their hosts (2,3) (Figure 1). In these natural hosts, the viruses remain in evolutionary stasis, showing minimal evolution at the amino acid level over extended periods. This fact indicates that the influenza-bird association is ancient; this lack of change is surprising because influenza viruses are segmented, negative-stranded RNA viruses that have no quality-control mechanisms during replication and are highly prone to variation. After transfer to a new type of host, either avian or mammalian, influenza viruses undergo rapid evolution. However, all 16 HA subtypes, including H5 and H7, have until recently been considered to be benign in their natural hosts. This benign equilibrium between the influenza virus and its host may have changed.

 

[FluBossie]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

AlaskaDenise

Also, Ducks don't normally get H5N1, per Dr. Niman's post at
http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/sho...ucks#post58108

dr. Niman wrote: that ducks normally don't die from H5N1, but there are many positive infected ducks and they can spread the virus to chickens who are not have had a vaccine.

 

[MHSC]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

It just occured to me...there were children in Turkey that became infected from ducks. Remember they played with the gloves that their father had thrown away after he carried sick ducks to be culled.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

...... ducks normally don't die from H5N1, but there are many positive infected ducks and they can spread the virus to chickens who are not have had a vaccine.

Yes - thanks for the correction.

As the article points out, they are a natural AI reservoir.

Also, vaccinated fowl still shed small levels of virus.

.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

The referenced article is very good & I recommend reading it as an explanation of viral circulation in ducks.

The Conclusion...

Conventional wisdom about pandemic influenza holds that a pandemic is inevitable and that the only question remaining is "When?" The H5N1 virus continues to evolve and spread, with additional human infections occurring in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, and Thailand. If this virus acquires human-to-human transmissibility with its present fatality rate of 50%, the resulting pandemic would be akin to a global tsunami. If it killed those infected at even a fraction of this rate, the results would be catastrophic.

While the high pathogenicity of the Qinghai bar-headed goose isolate is a continuing threat to poultry and humans, perhaps the most insidious threat comes from unobserved transmission through wild and domestic ducks. The isolation of H5N1 virus from bar-headed geese in Qinghai Lake in southern China in 2005 originated from unobserved infection in poultry markets and suggests that highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses continue to circulate unseen among poultry in China (17).

We cannot afford simply to hope that human-to-human spread of H5N1 will not happen and that, if it does, the pathogenicity of the virus will attenuate. Notably, the precursor of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)?associated coronavirus (31) repeatedly crossed species barriers, probably for many years, before it finally acquired the capacity for human-to-human transmission, and its pathogenicity to humans was not attenuated. We cannot wait and allow nature to take its course. SARS was interrupted by early case detection and isolation, but influenza is transmissible early in the course of the disease and cannot be controlled by similar means. Just 1 year before the catastrophic tsunami of December 2004, Asian leaders rejected a proposed tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean because it was too expensive and the risk was too remote. This mistake must not be repeated in relation to an H5N1 avian influenza pandemic. We must use this window of opportunity to prepare and to begin prepandemic implementation of prevention and control measures.<SUP>1</SUP>

 

[Niko]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

Bird flu threatens Vietnam's rice basket region

Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:29 AM GMT

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HANOI (Reuters) - Bird flu has been found in poultry in one more southern Vietnam province, the fourth in the past 10 days, threatening to engulf the country's Mekong Delta major rice-growing region.


The Animal Health Department said in a report seen on Monday that tests showed the deadly bird flu virus H5N1 had killed ducks in the Mekong delta province of Soc Trang, just a day after bird flu was found in the neighboring province of Tra Vinh.


"We have taken immediate measures to bring the outbreak under control in Soc Trang and all concerned agencies are on full alert to deal with new outbreaks," a spokeswoman for the Soc Trang Animal Health Department said.
http://i.today.reuters.co.uk/misc/genImage.aspx?uri=2007-01-15T032857Z_01_HAN178659_RTRUKOP_2_PICTURE0.jpg&resize=w160
Officials have confirmed outbreaks of the virus in ducks and chickens in five other Mekong delta provinces southwest of Vietnam's biggest urban area of Ho Chi Minh City.



Market inspectors have restricted the movement and selling of poultry in Ho Chi Minh City.


The Agriculture Ministry has ordered an additional anti-bird flu vaccination campaign in the Mekong Delta and requested reinforcement of animal health teams to contain the spread.


Vietnam has had no human H5N1 cases since November 2005 but the virus that first hit the Southeast Asian country in late 2003 re-emerged last month in Mekong delta poultry.


Agriculture officials have warned the country's 84 million people that the virus could spread to all 64 cities and provinces nationwide via migrating birds.


The risk of infections could also rise before the Tet Lunar New Year festival in mid-February, where the slaughter and eating of poultry is a traditional part of the new year's feast.


Bird flu killed 42 of the 93 people infected in Vietnam in 2003-2005.
It has killed 159 people globally since 2003, according to the World Health Organization, spreading from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
? Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=globalNews&storyid=2007-01-15T032903Z_01_HAN178659_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIRDFLU-VIETNAM.xml&src=rss

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Bird flu outbreak an "alarming" concern for Vietnam

http://www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=24265

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left height=35>Unsafe poultry pouring into Vietnam?s largest city
</TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left width="100%" colSpan=2><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=20 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=left colSpan=2>

</TD><TD align=left width=5></TD></TR><TR><TD class=cap align=left colSpan=2></TD><TD align=left width=5></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Unchecked poultry is entering Vietnam's largest urban area Ho Chi Minh City from neighboring provinces daily, in spite of efforts by authorities to control the flow over fear of possible bird flu outbreaks. </TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top align=left>

Poultry, most of it unchecked, gathered at many ?transits? in Long An, Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces before being transported to the metro?s suburban districts, Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper reported.

Transporters liked to use motorbikes, which were highly mobile and could take shortcut paths to avoid checks. Each could carry up to a hundred of kilos of poultry.

Smugglers also utilized the Saigon River to transport unchecked poultry into the city of about eight million people, which is only 137 km (85 miles) away from a Mekong Delta village hit bird flu outbreak last week.


?It?s mostly home delivery now,? a man named Khang, who led a transporters? group, told a disguised reporter of Nguoi Lao Dong. ?[Poultry shop owners] from Ho Chi Minh City rarely come to take the goods directly.?

?The goods? were usually ?camouflaged? to deceive animal health and market inspectors, who only caught a few hundred fowl a day, the report said.

The report blamed poor poultry sales and processing control in Long An, Tay Ninh and Binh Duong provinces for the problem.

After Ho Chi Minh City tightened its check on poultry, many local poultry shops and slaughterhouses ?took refuge? in the three provinces to continue their illegal business and send poultry back to the city.

The report also found out several ?underground? slaughterhouses in Ho Chi Minh City, which located in deep and narrow alleys in populated areas of districts 4, 5 and 8.

These abattoirs, with facilities accessible to patrons only, offered home delivery.

?Just leave your order and address, you?ll get what you want,? an owner said, brushing aside the reporter?s request to visit his abattoir to ensure quality.

The slaughter and eating of poultry, which is a traditional part of the New Year's feast in Vietnam, have become high risk after bird flu outbreaks re-emerged last month in Mekong Delta poultry.

The H5N1 bird flu killed 42 of the 93 people infected in Vietnam in 2003-2005, but the Southeast Asian country has had no human H5N1 cases since November 2005.

Agriculture officials have warned the country's 84 million people that the virus could spread nationwide via migrating birds.

.​

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