December 14, 2005

 

Cambodia to train veterinarians to fight bird flu

 

 

A UN agriculture agency is launching a joint programme with the government to better equip 1,500 village veterinarians to combat bird flu, which has so far killed four people in the poverty-stricken Southeast Asian nation, officials said Tuesday.

 

With US$800,000 in funding from the US, the project will train village animal health workers in six "high-risk" Cambodian provinces bordering Thailand and Vietnam, said Yves Froehlich, technical adviser of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Cambodia.

 

"We chose these provinces because we have had a lot of dead flocks (in the past) and a high density of poultry stocks and population," he said, referring to Takeo, Kampot, Prey Veng, Kampong Cham, Battambang and Banteay Meanchey provinces in Cambodia's northwest and southeast.

 

Training has previously been provided for veterinarians at higher provincial levels, but Froehlich said the current undertaking, which began Monday, is being taken "to the grassroots level" where the capacity for monitoring and awareness of bird flu are still weak.

 

During the first round of the project--scheduled to end in February--participants will be taught how to recognise bird flu symptoms, control mortality at the village level, inform villagers about the risks of bird flu and report suspected bird flu outbreaks to the appropriate authorities, he said.

 

They will also receive protective equipment, including masks, suits, gloves, boots, disinfectants, shovels to bury carcasses, bags for collecting fowl samples and notebooks in which to record outbreak reports, he added.

 

"We have complete kits to distribute to village animal health workers to help them effectively control (the virus) at the village level," he said.

 

The H5N1 bird flu virus has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, and went on to humans, killing at least 70, most of them in Vietnam.

 

Almost all human cases of the disease have been traced to contact with infected birds, however some experts fear the virus might mutate into a form that passes easily between people, sparking a pandemic.

 

Cambodia is one of several countries facing challenges to contain the disease as a result of poor health and infrastructure systems.