Vietnam’s mass bird vaccination to end in November

HANOI (Reuters) – Vietnam, the country worst hit by the
deadly bird flu that now threatens Europe, plans to complete
vaccinating all its poultry in November before periods of high
demand for chicken early next year, state media reported.

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told a mass
vaccination meeting on Wednesday the campaign should end by
November 15 so poultry could be safely on sale for the Lunar
New Year festival in early 2006, the VN Express online
newspaper said.

“If the vaccination delays to beyond November 15, it will
be very dangerous because the winter is the season of flu,” the
paper quoted Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat as saying.

Vietnam requires farmers to keep vaccinated birds for 28
days before putting them on sale to make sure the injected
birds are healthy.

Bird flu has killed 43 people in Vietnam, with 22 of the
victims dying since the H5N1 virus, which first swept through
much of Asia in late 2003, returned in December 2004.

It has also killed 12 people in Thailand, four in Cambodia,
three in Indonesia and spread to Kazakhstan and parts of Russia
where health workers found mass bird deaths in what could
become the first case of the deadly virus spreading to Europe.

There have been no reports of human infection in Russia.

Vietnam has been vaccinating poultry against bird flu since
July 31 in one province in the southern Mekong Delta and
another in the north.

The Agriculture Ministry said poultry in the remaining 11
Mekong Delta provinces and birds in Ho Chi Minh City would be
vaccinated from September.

State media said 100 million batches of poultry vaccine
were being imported from China and the Netherlands to ensure
all birds in the regions with high risk of infection, such as
the Mekong Delta, would be injected.

Vietnam now has around 210 million poultry.

Health experts said the virus is now endemic in parts of
Asia, including Vietnam and Thailand, despite the deaths or
slaughter of tens of millions of domestic fowl.

They fear the longer the virus survives, the more likely it
is to mutate into a form which can pass easily between humans,
potentially unleashing a global pandemic of killer flu.