January 12, 2006

Asia, Europe taking action against bird flu

As authorities struggle to contain the flu virus in Turkey, governments in both Europe and Asia are taking action to prevent the deadly disease from rearing its ugly head in their countries.

Vietnam, with 42 of the world's 76 confirmed human deaths reported to the WHO since the end of 2003, is the top country affected by the flu. It will import more bird flu vaccine from China to inoculate its poultry in the first quarter of this year The Animal Health Department would buy some 50 million doses of vaccine for the vaccination, according to Sai Gon Giai Phong, a Vietnamese newspaper.

Vietnam used over 400 million doses of vaccine in the last vaccination campaign that wrapped up last week.

However, there were signs that inspection work on the sale of poultry products were not done carefully. Poultry meat of questionable origin has been sold in nearly all the markets throughout cities and traders sometimes ignored the basic protection measures in trading and killing poultry for sale, reported state newspaper Nhan Dan.

In Hong Kong, though there was no outbreak of bird flu reported, the local government has waged a campaign to raise public attention to prevent the disease. It has also suspended the import of poultry from several Chinese provinces , the latest of which is Guizhou a southwestern province,  in view of a confirmed H5N1  outbreak. 

In Europe, the EU is raising funds from its member governments to monitor the disease. The monitoring programme, set to expire at the end of this month, requires governments to keep a close watch on migratory routes of birds and areas where wild birds might enter into close contact with domestic birds.

Meeting in Brussels, national veterinary experts authorised an extra EUR 2 million euros (US$2.42 million) in EU funding for laboratory tests, to cover 2006. EU funding from the current programme, from July 2005 to the end of January 2006, totalled 884,000 euros ($1.07 million),

In Britain, contingency plans are being set up amid high levels of concern about the human deaths in Turkey. Farmers face prison or fines if they do not register flocks of more than 50 birds. Many farmers now use large nets to protect their domestic fowl from contact with wild birds. 

In other news, two Chinese patients who were infected by avian influenza died, bringing the number of fatalities from the H5N1 strain of the virus to five in China. The new deaths bring China's mortality rate from avian influenza in line with the mortality rate of those elsewhere in the region. This seemed to confirm the general trend that bird flu kills six out of ten patients it infects, according to Richard Brown, an epidemiologist from WHO.