According to Cambodian health authorities, two more people recently contracted H5N1 bird flu, raising the total number of infected people this year to 16, 11 of whom have died.

Phat said that outbreaks have occurred in several provinces along the border with Cambodia. And with smuggling of poultry products into Vietnam on the rise, it is posing a high risk of spreading the disease.

The ministry has urged local authorities to ban the slaughter, transport, and distribution of smuggled poultry products, and review and organise poultry vaccination, especially in high-risk provinces like those along the border and with a lot of poultry farms.

The ministry said more than 26,000 quails with bird flu were recently destroyed in Tien Giang Province near Ho Chi Minh City, and the Department of Animal Health had supplied one million doses of bird flu vaccine to the province to help contain the disease.

Phat added that Chinese health authorities had confirmed that the H7N9 strain of the disease killed 45 people in China this year.