BANGKOK: The grim prognosis this week by Vietnam’s deputy agriculture and rural development minister Bui Ba Bong comes ahead of an expected surge in transporting poultry as this South-East Asian nation marks the annual Tet Festival, which falls in mid-February.

Since colder weather began sweeping through Vietnam early December, it has seen new outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in four provinces in the delta, resulting in the killing or culling of over 40,000 poultry, according to the state-run Vietnamese News Agency.

To combat this outbreak -- and reports of suspected outbreaks in central and northern Vietnam -- Hanoi is turning to its communist party machinery to mount a three-pronged offensive. That would include controlling the movement of livestock, extending the coverage of vaccinating poultry and accelerating the bird flu awareness campaign.

“Local poultry farmers have continued hatching eggs illegally and transporting unquarantined poultry and poultry products to other areas,” Bui Quang Anh, head of the animal health department, was quoted as having told on Wednesday’s edition of Vietnam News, a state-run English daily. “(The department has) ordered strict breeding, slaughtering and transportation inspections to provide safe and hygienic food products to consumers.”

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is throwing its weight behind on-going efforts in Vietnam and other parts of East Asia to combat new outbreaks of the deadly virus since the arrival of winter, the third cold season since the current strain of H5N1 struck this region.

“Winning the battle against highly pathogenic avian influenza demands a long-term vision,” a spokesperson at the UN food agency’s Asia-Pacific regional office in Bangkok told IPS. “Increased surveillance and rapid response to outbreaks are essential, as well as the need to immediately report to veterinary authorities any unexpected poultry deaths.”

“Improved hygiene on the farm, animal movement management or market inspection and culling in case of outbreaks are also essential,” the official added. “Now is no time for complacency.”

North-East and South-East Asian nations have been pressed into action as the deadly virus, now endemic in some parts, began to strike as the temperatures dropped. South Korea has slaughtered over one million chickens, quails and ducks beginning mid-November due to at least four outbreaks on poultry farms.

This week, China reported its first human case of bird flu after a lull, while Indonesia, the country worst hit by the virus, saw its first human fatality for the new year. The victim was a 14-year-old boy who died four days after being hospitalised for treatment with flu-like symptoms. He came from a neighbourhood close to Jakarta where poultry deaths were reported.

Avian influenza has been responsible for 157 human deaths since late 2003 and it has infected 263 people in ten countries, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Indonesia has the largest number of such fatalities, 58, followed by Vietnam, where 42 people have died from H5N1.

Three years after public health experts first warned of a possible flu pandemic, which would kill millions of people across the globe, if the virus mutates and becomes contagious among humans, officials are still to press the alarm bells. “The virus is mutating all the time; that is what they do. But these are minor mutations,” Peter Cordingly, spokesman for the WHO’s Western Pacific regional office, told IPS.

What is more, there still remain two strains of the virus in the region, he added. “The Indonesia-China strain and the Vietnam-Thailand strain.”

The WHO has also seen countries gaining in confidence to promptly report human cases of the virus to international health authorities, with China emerging as an illustration of this shift towards transparency since the current outbreak of bird flu was detected in the 2003 winter.

“The Chinese told us within 48 hours of their recent case,” said Cordingly. “This is much better than before, where there was a reluctance by the government to report to us.”

Similar walls, however, have not come down when border trade between two countries has led to the spread of avian flu amid poultry populations. Such a reluctance to avoid openly accepting or directing blame prevails despite countries pledging cooperation to implement international bird flu surveillance agreements.

In response to this “very sensitive diplomatic issue,” the FAO has called on governments to strengthen “cross-border” avian flu control measures. “FAO recognises that poultry trade across borders is continuing in South-East Asia and East Asia despite well-known risks to the governments and people in the region.”

The Asian countries with a bird flu history also include Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Burma. In South-East Asia alone some 200 million poultry have been culled, which has caused losses worth nearly 10 billion US dollars, notes the FAO.

But of the more than 50 countries where the virus has been detected, Vietnam had stood out as a model of how this deadly strain could be contained. A national programme of culling, vaccinating poultry, shutting down open chicken markets and an awareness campaign saw Vietnam without a bird flu case for an eight-month stretch, since December 2005.

That achievement came in the wake of a looming crisis, where Vietnam had the highest human death toll due to bird flu by end 2005 and some 44 million birds, an estimated 17.5 per cent of its poultry population, had died or been slaughtered since the 2203 winter H5N1 outbreak. —Dawn/ The IPS News Service