Vietnam Concerned About Chicken Health
Country looks for long-term research-based control of bird flu
By all comparisons, Vietnam should be in the same dire situation with the H5N1 avian influenza as are Indonesia and Egypt, overwhelmed and effectively ceasing to monitor, log and report outbreaks in poultry as they occur. Vietnam has logged over 2000 outbreaks with OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) since January 2004 twice as many as any other country, although once vaccination got underway the disease started to slow down in poultry and now looks more or less contained.
The marked downward trend in bird flu outbreaks in 2007 and 2008 is due to strong determination and commitment by government taking strict measures to prevent and control the disease. And especially through vaccination and poultry transport management, claimed Do Huu Dung, epidemiologist at the Viet Nam Animal Health Department talking to Vietnam News (VNS).
Outbreaks though fewer in number are still scattered across the north, central and southern regions of Vietnam, which means the whole country is still at risk for declining chicken health, unless government continues to tighten up on surveillance and control. Each area has its own high risk factors to deal with. Chicken smuggling from China is a problem for the northernmost provinces of Vietnam and large numbers of mobile ducks in the southern Mekong Delta present real difficulties for the nationwide vaccination programme.
Poultry testing for H5N1 especially in ducks shows virus circulation rate in remains high and demonstrates a continuing crucial role for vaccination. “What we need is a sustainable vaccination strategy to maintain control over bird flu” Do Huu Dung told VNS. Government priorities and goals are keeping the frequency and scale of outbreaks at the low present level, preventing further transmission of the H5N1 virus to humans and reducing the burden of poultry vaccination on the state.
According to Dr Jeff Gilbert, Avian Influenza Programme team leader of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Vietnam, the government will need to vaccinate for at least the next three to five years. But government officials complain how costs have mushroomed because vaccination is required on such a large scale for all poultry over the whole country. The Vietnamese authorities would like to see scale of vaccination reduced and to become less dependent on the strategy. This would require tight biosecurity countrywide but according to Do Huu Dung most farmers don’t know about biosecurity. This implies Vietnam could return to a 2004/5 type situation if vaccinations were withdrawn. It is up to us to improve surveillance he said.
Government thinks radical change in the farming system is required with a complete restructuring of the poultry industry. It will be driven by government in consultation with all farmers and processors across the country to eliminate practices that allow disease development and spread. This could be beginnings of an ‘assurance’ system for consumers who are not completely confident about eating poultry after four-year battering from bird flu resulting in 106 human cases with 52 fatalities.
Vietnamese Government has clearly not forgotten about the human dimension of this disease. Agriculture and Rural Development Deputy Minister Bui Ba Bong told a recent international conference on bird flu research [in Vietnam] how even more research was required to bring the virus under complete control. He said more work was needed to understand the nature of the virus, how it was transmitted and on the production of a vaccine to sustainably control a pandemic and minimise virus transmission to humans. “It is important to have scientific and evidence-based information the minister said.
It is even more important to get the information translated into decisions and policies,” said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation representative in Viet Nam, Andrew Speedy. He praised the Vietnamese Government for taking the situation so seriously and showing strong political commitment from the very beginning, said a report by VNS.
The open-door approach to research in Vietnam has enabled national and international research agencies to undertake field research and access available data, Speedy claimed, adding how the science-based strategy adopted by Viet Nam has proved so successful in reducing level of the virus.” No human cases have been reported for four months and the disease in poultry has also dropped to a much reduced level. The minister agreed by emphasising how research should be combined with restructuring of the poultry sector to increase biosecurity, alongside more mass education and communication about the disease.
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