China and Vietnam report new bird flu cases

China and Vietnam have each confirmed new bird flu outbreaks which killed thousands of birds, while officials in both countries warned more infections are likely to occur.

The latest Chinese outbreak, discovered on October 26, killed 8,940 chickens and prompted officials to destroy 369,900 other birds in Badaohao, a village in Liaoning province, east of Beijing, the Agriculture Ministry said yesterday.

China has reported three other bird flu outbreaks since October 14. No human cases have been reported, but authorities have warned that one is inevitable if the country fails to contain outbreaks in chickens and ducks.

In Vietnam, more than 3,000 poultry died or were culled this week in three villages in Bac Giang province, about 35 miles northeast of Hanoi, according to Nguyen Dang Khoa, the province’s vice chairman.

Vietnamese officials have banned the transport of poultry to or from the three affected villages, which have been disinfected, Khoa said. Settlements bordering the infected villages have also been disinfected and poultry have been vaccinated to prevent the virus from spreading further, he said.

However, Hoang Van Nam, deputy director of the Animal Health Department, said more bird flu cases are likely to occur.

“We expect more outbreaks, not just in Bac Giang, but also in other provinces,” he said. “Cooler weather now makes it easier for the virus to spread.” November to March is when Vietnam has reported most of its bird flu cases and deaths.

Vietnam began vaccinating its poultry flocks in early August, but its deadline of completing the vaccination of 150 million birds by mid-November may be delayed by at least two weeks because of a shortage of vaccines imported from China.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed at least 62 people – including 41 in Vietnam, according to World Health Organisation figures – and resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million chickens in Asia since 2003.

Most human cases have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, but experts worry the virus could mutate and become easily transmissible between humans, possibly triggering a deadly flu pandemic.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged governments to create better systems for compensating farmers with infected poultry stocks.

One way to control the disease’s spread is to slaughter sick flocks, but some countries don’t have adequate procedures in place to compensate farmers whose livelihoods would be destroyed, Annan said.

“If they are not compensated, they are not going to tell you whether their birds are sick,” Annan said at a global health summit in New York. If other pandemics have taught us anything, it is that silence is deadly.”

In Australia, a man who returned from China complaining of shortness of breath was rushed to the hospital with a possible case of bird flu tested negative for the virus, Victoria state health official Robert Hall said today.

Following state health guidelines, the man’s doctor had taken the precaution of sending him to the hospital for testing when he could not rule out a bird flu infection, health department spokesman Bram Alexander said.

Scientists in Vietnam have said they are ready to begin testing a new flu vaccine on human volunteers when they get government permission, following an €14.9m allocation from Washington this week as part of US pandemic preparations.

Doan Thi Thuy, deputy director of the National Institute of Health and Epidemiology’s Vaccine and Biological Products No. 1 Co., where the vaccine is being developed, said preliminary tests of the new vaccine on chickens and monkeys have produced promising results.