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Vietnam appeals for bird flu help

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Vietnam has appealed to the United Nations for help in combating a recent outbreak of bird flu. In the past four weeks, 12 Vietnamese have died and more than a million poultry birds have been culled.

The government is inviting the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation to send experts to help prevent the spread of the disease. The latest victim was a Cambodian woman who died in southern Vietnam last month. Last year, the UN agencies had expressed their displeasure when the Vietnamese authorities declared the country free of bird flu against their advice. Now they have been proved right, the government has been quick to ask for their assistance in tackling the outbreak which appears be beyond their control.The large number of human deaths from bird flu in the past month has been the cause of great concern, especially as many people prepare to travel across the country for the Lunar New Year holiday. However, while half of the country’s 64 provinces have reported cases of bird flu, there has been no confirmed case of human-to-human transmission in Vietnam. Vietnam’s 12 human victims who have died of the H5N1 virus so far this year had all come into contact with raw, infected poultry. The authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have ordered that 200,000 ducks be culled by Sunday and many people in Vietnam are turning away from poultry for the traditional Tet festival. The strain of virus causing the deaths – H5N1 – is suspected of jumping from human to human once before, in September last year, when a mother in Thailand probably became infected from her daughter. But experts are especially worried in case the virus combines with a human flu virus, if someone were to be simultaneously infected with both. If the viruses then exchanged genes, a new, highly infective virus could be created and be easily passed from person to person. (Source: BBC Health, febraury 2005)


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Dates

Posted On: 4 February, 2005
Modified On: 16 January, 2014


Created by: myVMC