January 24, 2005

 

 

Vietnam reports more bird flu outbreaks

 

Bird flu has stricken 23 Vietnamese provinces and cities, killing and leading to the forced culling of nearly 504,000 fowls since January 1, local newspaper People's Army reported on Sunday.

 

Vietnam has detected bird flu outbreaks in 232 communes in 23 provinces, mainly in the southern region, the paper said.

 

Since December 28, 2004, nine cases of human infection have been reported in the country, seven in the south and two in the north. Of these, seven have died.

 

The country's Ministry of Health has placed a temporary ban on importing fowls and their eggs from neighboring countries.

 

Vietnam is considering the use of poultry vaccines and research on vaccines for humans.

 

The National Hygiene and Epidemiology Institute has used bird flu vaccines developed on mice. It will conduct tests on monkeys in February for one month and a half and then on humans for two months.

 

In late March 2004, Vietnam declared an end to the bird flu outbreak that started in December 2003 and killed or led to the forced culling of 17 percent of its poultry population, or 43.2 million fowls.

 

Since January, bird flu has stricken 404 communes of 25 cities and provinces nationwide, killing and leading to the forced culling of more than 557,600 fowls, according to the Department of Animal Health

 

The spread of bird flu in Vietnam continues to accelerate.  The number of communes affected was reported as 25 on Jan 7.  This figure has since jumped to 112 on Jan17, 160 on Jan 19, 179 on Jan 20, 232 on Jan 22, and 404 today. 

 

The same type of increase was seen for poultry killed or culled this month.  The number was 130,000 on Jan 12, jumped to 254,000 on Jan 17, 296,000 on Jan 19, 504,000 on Jan 22, and 557,600 today.

 

The number of confirmed human cases is also increasing.  Of the 10 confirmed cases, 4 are linked to two clusters of likely human-to-human transmission of avian influenza.  One cluster involved 3 brothers who sequentially developed symptoms about 10 days apart (from Jan 1 to Jan 20).

 

The exponential spread of bird flu suggests more human cases and human-tohuman transmission will be reported in coming days.