January 15, 2004

Vietnam Bird Flu May Spread To Pigs

A top government vet in Vietnam says bird flu may be transmitted from birds to pigs, and the disease would eventually land up in humans.

Unconfirmed reports quoted local officials in southern Vietnam saying bird flu may have begun killing pigs. Dau Ngoc Hao, deputy director of the Agriculture Ministry's veterinary department, said: "It is possible that the bird flu virus spreads from chickens to pigs before jumping [to] humans."

Scientists fear a global pandemic if the highly contagious virus, for which there is no vaccine, spreads from person to person. Leo Poon Lit-man, an assistant professor in microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, warned: "We don't rule out a large-scale outbreak if the virus mutates in pigs or humans in such a way as to raise man-to-man transmissibility."

The virus has killed nearly 1.4 million chickens in the southern provinces of Long An and Tien Giang since last week.

The World Health Organisation is seeking funds to help contain the outbreak, with which a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation official said Vietnam was ill prepared to cope.

The five suspected cases of H5N1 bird flu, on top of two previous cases, come after the virus was confirmed to have killed three people in Vietnam. It is suspected of causing at least nine other deaths. The WHO was trying to verify "many reports" of flu deaths, said Hitoshi Oshitani, its regional communicable disease surveillance adviser.

He said donor countries would be asked to pay for vaccine to allow mass inoculations of poultry. Meanwhile, the culling of chickens would continue.

Dr Oshitani said the outbreak was more difficult to contain than the one in 1997, when bird flu first jumped the species barrier in Hong Kong, killing six people. "We do not know the extent of the outbreak. Many people raise chickens in their back yards .?? We cannot ask all families to report chicken deaths."