Via the New Straits Times: Vietnam battles lingering bird flu threat. Excerpt:
Vietnam may have contained the fatal bird flu outbreak that raged in the late 2000s but it is still struggling with new cases of the disease that have puzzled experts in the communist country.
Since January, bird flu outbreaks have occurred in 14 provinces. About 65,000 chicken and ducks have died or been culled. Authorities have confirmed four human cases, of which two have been fatal.
It’s a long way from the peak in 2003 to 2009 when the virus infected millions of fowl and killed 57 people — making Vietnam the second worst-hit country after Indonesia, according to the World Health Organisation.
In 2011, the country reported no new human cases, but the virus was still there, less threatening but not eradicated.
“Bird flu has a harmful impact on agriculture, on people’s lives, with the reappearance of new weaker strains,” said Hoang Van Nam, director of the animal health department at the agriculture ministry.
Outbreaks happen nationwide, he said, adding this was due to a mix of “the family structure of farming, a lack of information and gaps in vaccination and farm control programmes.” Concerns about avian influenza have risen in the region with China, Cambodia and Indonesia all reporting deaths from the H5N1 strain of the virus this year.
But traders at Hanoi’s Ha Vi market, where between 80 and 100 tonnes of live birds are sold every day, say they are not concerned.
“Who said there is a bird flu epidemic here? This doesn’t interest me. They exaggerate these things. I know only that all my chickens are in good health,” market vendor Do Thi Thanh Hoa told AFP.
She said neither she nor her colleagues had to provide certificates of origin or vaccination for the birds they sell.
“Since the market opened, no one has been infected with H5N1. In this market, even when there is a ban, we still buy chickens and eat meat. Everyone is fine,” said Dao Thi Ngoc, another farmer.
“The TV keeps talking about H5N1. Where is it happening?” State television regularly runs reports on the dangers of transporting poultry that has not been vaccinated, warning of the risks of buying birds smuggled in from China.
But in a country where humans and fowl live side by side and where small, family-owned units dominate poultry production, it is almost impossible to monitor every bird slaughtered and sold.
