vietnam outbreak

CSIRO's Dr Chris Prideaux says that even if development of a vaccine is too late to help control the current outbreak in Asia, it would still be possible for researchers to quickly adapt it to deal with new strains of avian influenza.

.Vietnam Estimates It Won't Stamp Out Bird Flu for Five Years
Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam's government said avian influenza won't be eliminated in the country for at least five years, after initially declaring in March that bird flu no longer existed in the country.

Nineteen Vietnamese have died from bird flu this year, including three deaths within the past month, according to the World Health Organization. More than 43 million poultry have died or been killed to prevent the spread of the disease, with the number since the March 30 declaration that the country was free of bird flu exceeding 60,000.

The World Health Organization said last week that the return of the disease throughout Asia showed it was right to warn governments not to declare the disease beaten, with the United Nations agency's chief representative in Vietnam speaking of ``several years that this will be here.'' Vietnamese authorities now agree.

``We will need five years to totally eliminate the bird flu virus in the country,'' Bui Quang Anh, director of animal health at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said yesterday in Hanoi. ``However, this task will meet a lot of difficulties because the efficiency of the job depends on the source of the disease, which is brought by migratory birds.''



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