Vietnam man dies of bird flu, global experts meet

By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI (Reuters) – Bird flu has claimed its 42nd victim in Vietnam, the worst-affected country, amid signs the virus has hit the Asian nation earlier and on a larger scale than last year.

News of the death came as world health experts agreed in Geneva that controlling the spread of avian flu in birds must be the priority, saying this was the best way to prevent the virus mutating into one that could cause a human pandemic.

"We are not in a pandemic situation. It is still an animal disease," said Margaret Chan, the top World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic official.

The victim was a 35-year-old Hanoi man who died after eating chicken, said Nguyen Van Binh, deputy director of the Vietnamese Health Ministry’s Preventive Medicine Department.

"This is the first death since the start of this year’s epidemic season," Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan was quoted as saying by the state-run Tien Phong newspaper.

The first Vietnamese death last winter, the season when the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain seems to thrive, was in December.

WHO spokeswoman Dida Connor said it was too early to know if the latest death meant the virus had become more virulent.

But Tien Phong quoted a Vietnamese government report as saying bird flu had spread on a wider scale and had arrived in the north of the country earlier than last year.

BIRDS SLAUGHTERED

Vietnam had detected poultry outbreaks in five provinces and Hanoi in the past month and some 20,000 birds had died or been slaughtered, the newspaper said.

At the same time in 2004, outbreaks had hit five southern provinces, resulting in the death or slaughter of 7,300 birds.

Doctors said they suspected bird flu had also killed a 68-year-old man in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Tri.

The virus is known to have killed 64 people in Asia since 2003 — 42 of them in Vietnam, 13 in Thailand, five in Indonesia and four in Cambodia. All had close contact with birds. So far the H5N1 virus has not shown it can spread easily among people.

Indonesia said a 16-year-old girl who died on Tuesday after being admitted to hospital with high fever and pneumonia might have had bird flu. The girl lived near a bird market.

China, which has not reported any human cases of bird flu, has asked for international help to check whether the virus may have killed a 12-year-old girl and made two others sick.

For a bird flu virus to become a pandemic strain capable of killing many millions of people, it would have to mutate on its own or mix with a human influenza virus.

The World Bank says a flu pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to $800 billion.

Global experts in Geneva said the best way to head off a human pandemic was to stop the spread of the virus in birds.

"The control of avian disease is the best way to control a pandemic," said Joseph Domenech, chief veterinary officer of the Food and Agricultural Organization.

CALL FOR ACTION

Public health experts nonetheless agreed countries should take action to protect their people.

"Any country that has a good pandemic preparedness plan will minimise or mitigate the risk and impact of a pandemic," Chan said, adding the WHO was in talks with drug companies to build up regional supplies of antiviral drugs for poor countries.

The drugs will be the first line of defense if a pandemic strain emerges as it will take time to develop a vaccine.

Dr Klaus Stohr, team coordinator of the WHO’s Global Influenza Programme, said it would be possible to produce 900 million doses of a new vaccine against a pandemic flu 8 months after the strain had been identified.

But the virus could spread around the world in 3-4 months.

"One needs enough vaccine for 6.4 billion people and that is currently not in the cards," he said.

Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), told the second day of the three-day meeting in Geneva veterinary services were in the vanguard of the fight.

He said if an outbreak of bird flu occurred in any country, classic animal health policy should be immediately applied with the subsidised culling of infected or in-contact animals and strict movement curbs introduced for animals and humans.

"Hours count. If you don’t act within 48 hours, the virus can spread and the costs multiply by thousands," Vallat said.

The OIE also said for the early detection and culling policy to work, it was fundamental there should be "immediate and fair compensation mechanisms for livestock producers."

The World Bank will launch a $1 billion appeal at the conference, half of it to be provided through its grants or interest-free loans and half through a fund financed by donors.

(For more stories, pictures and video on bird flu see http://today.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage2.aspx?src=cms)

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Pat Reaney and David Evans in Geneva, Karima Anjani in Jakarta, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Mark Bendeich in Kuala Lumpur)