vietnam fears bird flu mammal mutation
Kincella, Mine was from TA. Latest news: Vietnam fears bird flu mammal mutation Monday Nov 14 14:03 AEST Bird flu may have infected two more people in Vietnam, where scientists say it has mutated into a more dangerous form which could spread in mammals.
State newspapers say a student is being tested in hospital after eating chicken eggs, and samples from a 78-year-old woman who died from serious pneumonia on Friday are also being tested.
An Agriculture Ministry report said the H5N1 virus had now hit 10 of Vietnam's 64 provinces since returning in early October. Vietnam's death toll since the virus first arrived in late 2003 is 42.
"There is much possibility that the disease spreading is due to improper quarantine of infected poultry and poultry products," Bui Quang Anh, head of the ministry's animal health department, said in an urgent message to provincial authorities.
Search-and-destroy task force groups must be set up to deal with sick poultry, he said.
The Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute said its decoding of 24 samples of the H5N1 virus taken from poultry and humans showed a significant variation.
"The H5N1 type that infected people and waterfowl in early 2005 has several mutations focusing in the important functional parts of the surface proteins," the institute said on its website at www.pasteur-hcm.org.vn.
"There has been a mutation allowing the virus to breed effectively on mammal tissue and become highly virulent," it said.
The study also found a mutation of the PB2 gene in a virus sample from a patient who died in the southern province of Dong Thap earlier this year.
The finding showed the virus had been combining changes to adapt to new hosts, Sunday's Quan Doi Nhan Dan newspaper quoted Cao Bao Van, head of the institute's molecule biology department, as saying.
Vietnam is gearing up its battle against bird flu, with officials in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City spreading the word that poultry raising will be banned in those cities.
The Hanoi's People Committee said live poultry would be destroyed from Thursday if they were found in the capital.
Last week, Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said police and soldiers would be used to quarantine farms, destroy sick poultry and man checkpoints to control poultry transportation better.
Bird flu has killed at least 64 people in Asia since it arrived in 2003 and has became endemic in several countries.
Thirteen people are known to have died of bird flu in Thailand, five in Indonesia and four in Cambodia.
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