Experts seek new vaccine for deadly bird flu

International health experts are seeking a vaccine for the bird flu that has killed five people in Vietnam and millions of chickens across Asia.

China vowed today to step up vigilance at its border with Vietnam to keep out the disease.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said that because of “mounting concern” over the five deaths, it is working on a new vaccine to protect people from the avian flu that has struck poultry farms in “historically unprecedented epidemics” in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan.

A prototype could be ready in about a month.

Scientists are working with flu virus obtained from two of the victims. The WHO also oversaw production of a similar vaccine during last February’s bird flu scare, which caused two cases and one death in Hong Kong.

The outbreak has savaged Asia’s giant poultry industry. Thailand, while maintaining its chicken stocks are safe, is the latest country to order a mass slaughter of fowl as a precaution against bird flu.

The Bangkok Post reported that 850,000 chickens had already been slaughtered and quoted agricultural officials as saying there would be more precautionary killings in 20 provinces.

Meanwhile, a WHO team plus six scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control were in Vietnam investigating how the bird flu has jumped from poultry to people, WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said in Hanoi.

Vietnam is the only country with confirmed cases of the bird flu in people.

The scientists are trying to determine exactly how the flu is being transmitted from bird to human.

Among the puzzles they will need to solve is why the bulk of the bird infections have occurred in southern Vietnam, while all the human victims have been from the northern region around Hanoi.

Health officials believe patients contracted the disease through contact with the sick birds, but have not confirmed that.

So far, there has been no evidence of person-to-person transmission. But health officials have warned that if the avian virus mutates to allow human transmission, it could make the disease a bigger health crisis than Sars, which killed nearly 800 people worldwide last year.

The spread of bird flu, along with the re-emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome – with three recent cases confirmed in China – has put Asia on a region-wide health alert.

It is the first such bird flu epidemic in Japan since 1925, and the first ever documented in Vietnam and South Korea.

A vigilant China has banned chicken imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, and yesterday, its southern province of Yunnan closed all 40 trade posts along its its 740-mile border with Vietnam.

China’s state-run media announced yesterday that the country’s Cabinet was ordering agencies that deal with border areas to increase inspections. Prevention of bird flu must be considered an “imperative task”, the official Xinhua News Agency said.