December 22, 2004

Vietnam Reports Bird Flu Outbreaks In Mekong Delta

Vietnam Tuesday reported bird flu outbreaks in poultry farms in the southern Mekong Delta, as the epidemic that killed 32 people in Asia earlier this year made a reappearance.

Last week, nearly 4,000 chickens from a private farm in southern Can Tho City died or were culled after they were suspected of contracting the disease, said Luu Phuoc Hau, deputy director of the provincial animal health bureau.

Animal health officials have disinfected the farm and imposed a transportation ban to and from the infected area for 21 days, he said. No additional outbreaks have been reported there and authorities have urged farmers to disinfect their farms every week.

There were no reports of people being infected.

Hau said only a few dozen big poultry farms remain in Can Tho City after bird flu outbreaks ravaged the poultry industry there earlier this year, but farmers still raise poultry to supplement their incomes and the practice is difficult for health officials to control.

Tuesday's Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reported that small outbreaks killing about several hundred chickens and ducks also were reported in Hau Giang and An Giang provinces in the southern Mekong Delta.

During the outbreaks earlier in the year, more than 40 million chickens and ducks were culled or died from the bird flu, severely devastating the country's domestic poultry industry.

International health officials at a conference in Singapore Monday warned that the world's next pandemic was likely to be a potent mix of avian influenza and a human flu virus - and that it was likely to emerge from Asia.

The current H5N1 bird flu virus, which decimated the region's poultry stocks, hasn't acquired the human-flu characteristics it would need to be passed easily between people.