Bird Flu Insurance

Vietnam is instructing localities nationwide to temporarily cease the raising of poultry in bird flu-stricken areas, in a move to stop the spread of the disease, according to local newspaper Youth on Tuesday.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Cao Duc Phat has just asked bird flu-hit cities and provinces to halt the raising of fowls in communes or districts stricken by the disease, and to cease the development of waterfowls, mainly ducks, in unaffected areas. He has also urged local research institutes to vaccinate poultry on a trial basis.

Two major reasons are cited for the minister’s decision: bird flu has so far this year spread to 32 cities and provinces nationwide, killing and leading to the forced culling of more thanone million fowls, and many ducks in localities, especially in thesouthern Mekong Delta, are infected with the bird flu virus strainof H5, but still look healthy.

Altogether, 32 bird flu patients in Vietnam have died since the disease started hitting it in December 2003. The country, in late March 2004, declared an end to the bird flu that killed 17 percentof its fowl population, causing a total loss of 1.3 trillion VND (82.8 million dollars) to the local poultry industry.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health will sponsor the meeting in Ho Chi Minh City from Feb. 23 to 25, according to the food agency representative in Vietnam, Anton Rychener. “Participants will discuss the control of the outbreak and the measures that could possibly be undertaken,” Rychener said.

The announcement of the meeting came amid new reports of casualties and of the spread of the disease in Vietnam and neighboring nations. The World Health Organization has said the bird flu virus may already have infected people in countries neighboring Vietnam, including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

In southern Vietnam, a 10-year-old girl died from bird flu, the 12th victim of the disease in Vietnam in the past month, a doctor said Monday.

Dead chickens were reported to have been found at the girl’s house and in her village nearly a month ago. She developed a high fever and strong cough a week after having helped her family bury the dead poultry, said the director of the Preventive Medicine Center in Long An Province.

Two men from northern Vietnam, aged 66 and 30 respectively, had also tested positive for the A(H5N1) strain of bird flu. Bird flu has now spread to 31 of Vietnam’s 64 provinces and municipalities. More than one million poultry have been culled in Vietnam since the start of the year, in a bid to stem the spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, a 25-year-old Cambodian woman suspected of having bird flu died in southern Vietnam, and doctors said on Monday they hoped the case would encourage the Cambodian authorities to take preventative measures.

Officials in Bangkok said Monday that a potentially fatal strain of bird flu has been detected in two additional Thai provinces. That brings to six the number of Thai provinces affected by the disease. Twelve people have so far died in Thailand from the virus, which has swept through Asia since December 2003.

The meeting now set to take place in Vietnam’s southern economic capital will evaluate the achievements of control measures implemented in the last 12 months and will review scientific advances in the understanding of the deadly influenza that has killed a total of 44 people in Vietnam and Thailand.

HANOI Vietnam will play host to a regional meeting on bird flu late in February, drawing delegates from countries affected by the disease as well as from UN agencies and major donors, officials said Monday.