The bird flu epidemic, which has occurred in Vietnam the past few months has caused serious damage to the husbandry sector as it has killed around 36 million poultry throughout the country, or 14.25% of the total herds.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's Animal Health Department released the report and statistics at a national conference on bird flu prevention and control in the southern Vietnam on December 7.
Bui Quang Anh, Head of the department said some of the small-scattered epidemics in southern provinces have been contained with only 17 chickens dead on November 6. "There were no more bird flu outbreak reported so far this year," he said.
Vietnam now has around 218 million poultry, it said, adding that the poultry herds would increase in late 2004 thanks to higher consumption demands for New Year festivals.
Vietnam's poultry herds are likely to reach 254 million in late 2005 as the country is cooperating with the World Bank and United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization to implement $3 million poultry recovery project, according to the department.
However, Vietnamese Government has ordered agricultural and health officials to take greater measures to prevent a recurrence of last year's bird flu outbreak, even though the disease has been declared as under control nationwide.
The animal health department also warns about the traditional uses of duck's blood curds in Vietnam, saying that it could be a factor to transmit the H5N1 virus to human.
In related news, Vietnamese experts and scientists have recently announced that they have basically produced serums that can be used to test, detect and manage the H5N1 virus. This would help Vietnam quickly detect the new outbreak of bird flu epidemic and then enable specific measures to deal with the situation.
