Wednesday, January 21, 2004

International experts join WHO team in hunting down bird flu

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - International health experts are trying to trace the lines of transmission of a bird flu that has killed five people and millions of chickens across Asia, while seeking a vaccine for the virus.

China has shut trade ports along its border with hard-hit Vietnam to keep out the disease.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that because of "mounting concern'' over the five deaths in Vietnam, it is working on a new vaccine to protect people from the virus.

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.

In Vietnam, six scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention joined a WHO team leading the probe on how the bird flu has jumped from poultry to people.

A total of 14 scientists, with expertise in epidemiology, disease surveillance and livestock and animal husbandry, will be involved in investigations, WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said in Hanoi.

WHO described the bird flu outbreaks ravaging poultry industries in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan as "historically unprecedented epidemics.''

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

Vietnam is the only country with confirmed cases of the bird flu in people; five have died.

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.

A vigilant China issued an emergency notice on bird flu, requiring "veterinary and quarantine units at the grass-roots level'' to make daily reports to higher departments.

Officials ordered that, if the disease is found, all poultry within three kilometers (two miles) be slaughtered and all poultry within five kilometers (three miles) be vaccinated immediately.

The southern Chinese province of Yunnan has closed all of the 40 trade ports along its 1,200-kilometer ( 740-mile) border with Vietnam and set up quarantine checkpoints, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's central government has already banned chicken imports from Vietnam as well as Japan and South Korea.

Some farmers say that millions of chickens have died of from bird flu in Thailand, a major chicken exporter. But government officials attribute the deaths to fowl cholera and infectious bronchitis.

Though Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced that a man was sick with symptoms similar to bird flu, he was quick to play down the threat, saying "so far there is no bird flu found in Thailand.''

Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said preliminary tests of the sick man in Nakhon Sawan province, 210 kilometers (130 miles) north of Bangkok, showed he has a bacterial lung infection. Further examinations were being done. - AP

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