Via Saigon Giai Phong, a February 7 report: Bird flu re-occurs in Tay Ninh. This is the first acknowledgement I've seen in the Vietnamese media of the Cambodian human H5N1 cases. Excerpt and then a comment:
The National Steering Committee of Bird Flu Prevention said that the disease has occurred in the southern province of Tay Ninh at its meeting in February 5 in Hanoi.
The bird flu occurred in two households in Bau Tep village in Ben Cau District and Co Do commune in Tay Ninh Town with more than 3,438 water fowls have either died or been culled so far.
In addition, Cambodian Ministry of Health announced five people have infected with the disease in January, 2013 and four succumbed to the disease.
More dangerous, all districts that reported deaths are located in the border crossings with Vietnam.
Nguyen Duc Trong deputy head of the Department of Animal Health said smuggled unsafe Chinese chickens have re-occurred in markets Ha Vy and Thuong Tin in Hanoi.
Every day 1-2 tons of illegally imported chickens from border crossings imported into the country as related agencies have practiced lax behavior after two month campaign to crack down on this long-existing problem.This brings up a question rarely asked and never answered: Is China exporting H5N1? Illegal poultry smuggling from China has been a persistent problem in northern Vietnam for years, and the Vietnamese often blame local B2B outbreaks on that trade.
But China rarely mentions such outbreaks on its own territory, though it does report human cases—two last year, with one death. Presumably sick poultry were the sources of those cases. It does seem unlikely that a big country with billions of chickens and ducks has somehow eliminated B2B H5N1 while its neighbours keep struggling with it.
Politically, it may be convenient to blame your neighbours for your H5N1; Bangladesh and India trade insults on that score almost as frequently as they trade chickens. Maybe China really is innocent, and Cambodia and Vietnam are dealing with endemic local H5N1. But it would be helpful to do some real research into the southeast Asian poultry trade, and to determine something like the truth.
