- HANOI (DPA) - After two months
with no reports of large bird flu outbreaks, 6,000 birds have been killed
by the virus in southern Vietnam, a veterinary official said on Saturday.
-
- "Seven hundred chickens on a farm in An Khanh commune
in Ben Tre province were culled last Saturday after 6,000 of them had died
within four days", said Mai Van Hiep, director of the province's veterinary
department.
-
- "Test samples of the fowls were positive for H5
virus", Hiep said from the province 150 kilometres south of Ho Chi
Minh City.
-
- The last reported large outbreak was in mid-April, but
smaller outbreaks have been continually occurring since then, a veterinary
official said.
-
- "Actually, Vietnam never announces the termination
of bird flu", said Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of the animal health
department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. "Outbreaks,
with large or small quantity of fowl, are still scattered throughout the
country."
-
- On Friday, a senior health official said a number of
suspected human-to-human cases of H5N1 had been detected by the National
Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology.
-
- "We have got a number of suspected cases of human-to-human
transmission of bird flu, including a doctor from Bach Mai hospital, Nguyen
Tran Hien", the director of the institute, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
dpa. "We will need to do more research before coming to any conclusion."
-
- The World Health Organization (WHO) has long warned that
if the H5N1 virus mutates into a form that is easily spreadable between
people, millions could die worldwide in the resulting pandemic.
-
- "Every incident needs to be rapidly and thoroughly
investigated, both as to whether human-to-human transmission has occurred
and more importantly to confirm whether that transmission was efficient,
which might indicate that the risk of the spread of avian influenza in
the human population has increased", said Peter Horby, a WHO epidemiologist
working in Vietnam.
-
- Since reports began appearing in late 2003, 38 people
have died from the virus in Vietnam.
-
- The first wave of the virus saw it spread to 57 of Vietnam,s
64 provinces and cities. During the second wave from the end of 2004 and
April 2005, the virus has affected bird populations in 36 provinces and
cities, and 1.6 million birds have died or been culled.
-
- As well as outbreaks in chickens, health experts warned
that ducks are a silent carrier of the virus. They can carry the virus
without showing any symptoms.
-
- A ban on the raising of waterfowl is routinely flouted
and flocks continue to roam in the countryside.
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