May 7, 2004

 

 

Vietnam Bird Flu Under Control

 

Vietnam authorities have declared its latest bird flu outbreak under control, just weeks after declaring itself free of the disease.

Bui Quang Anh, director of the animal health department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the outbreak occurred in mid-April on a farm in the southern Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap.

 

"The chickens were infected with H5," he said, insisting there had been no recurrence of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus that killed 16 people in the communist nation.

 

The Vietnamese Government said on March 30 that bird flu had been eradicated after a 90-day infection period despite warnings from United Nations health experts that it was acting prematurely and recklessly.

 

Vo Be Hien, head of Dong Thap's veterinary department, said 175 chickens had died or were culled as a result of last month's outbreak, which was discovered on a family farm in the Cao Lanh district. He, however, did not rule out H5N1.

 

"The tests taken from some dead chickens there proved that they infected with H5 but we do not know yet if it was H5N1. We did our best to ensure that the farm and its surrounding areas were disinfected," Hien told AFP.

 

The Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, which is one of the country's principal laboratories for testing for the deadly virus, said it had not heard of any new human infections.

 

The agriculture ministry's Nong Nghiep Vietnam newspaper said today that the chances of further H5N1 outbreaks were extremely high.

 

"According to the results of our serum tests carried out on poultry nationwide, there is a risk of bird flu re-emerging in Vietnam," the ministry's Anh was quoted as saying.

 

"But more tests are needed to be done for a proper conclusion. We will openly inform the public if bird flu re-emerges because it is the best way to deal with it effectively."

 

The communist regime was widely criticised for its lack of co-operation with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other disease control agencies in tackling its bird flu crisis.

 

The WHO has warned that it could take months, probably years to eliminate H5N1 from the environment.

 

More than 44 million poultry died or were slaughtered across Vietnam as a result of the disease, which was detected in 57 of its 64 provinces.