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Bird flu infects 6 000 chickens
20/06/2005 18:56 - (SA)
Hanoi - About 6 000 chickens were infected with the deadly bird flu virus in southern Vietnam in the country's first such outbreak in two months, said a top animal health official on Monday.
Bui Quang Anh, animal health director at agriculture ministry, said: "Now we must be on very high vigilance."
He was speaking after reporting the recent outbreak in Ben Tre, southwest of Ho Chi Minh city.
He said: "We must continue our prevention work against bird flu", warning that "some provinces have yet to pay serious attention to the situation".
However, Anh said there were no plans now for mass poultry vaccinations.
Two human cases denied
The director of Hanoi's institute of tropical diseases, Nguyen Duc Hien, on Monday denied Vietnamese media reports of two new human cases of bird flu.
On Friday, he said six patients in Vietnam had tested positive for the virus, which had killed 38 people in the country since late 2003.
Doctors said all the patients had been admitted to the institute from northern provinces in June.
A total of 54 people had died from the H5N1 virus, including 12 Thais and four Cambodians, since the beginning of the epidemic in 2003.
The World Health Organisation had asked governments to prepare for a possible pandemic after a study in Vietnam showed signs of a greater risk of human-to-human transmission of bird flu.
- AFP
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