Vietnam needs help with bird flu

Mai Phuong, VietNamNews, Asia News Network/Hanoi

Vietnam has called -- through Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung -- for the continuation of international help to ensure the defeat of the deadly bird flu virus H5N1.

If the international community is wise, it will heed the call.

For humans have no natural defense against the virus and if it mutates so that it can be transmitted from person-to-person -- the ensuing catastrophe will know neither border, class or creed.

Further, the mortality rate is likely to be about 70 percent. The UN's newly-appointed coordinator for avian and human influenza, David Nabarro, has offered his own grim statistics for any resulting pandemic.

"Anything between five and 150 million people," could die he says.

The H5N1 virus has swept through Asia's domestic fowls since 2003 and where it has crossed over into humans has killed at least 60 people.

Most of those infected were in contact with sick birds but scientists, including advisors to the World Health Organization, fear that it could mutate so that it spreads via a sneeze.

The doctors are basing their forecasts on history, including the so-called Spanish flu that appeared at the end of World War I and killed as many as 50 million people.

In 1957, the Asian flu claimed almost 70,000 lives in the United States and one million worldwide after spreading from China.

Unfortunately, a specific vaccine against bird flu has yet to be developed while scientists do not know how much of any successful vaccine would be needed to protect the public.

To add to the woe, drug makers say that it could take at least six months to produce adequate stocks of a vaccine and that existing stockpiles could be useless against the flu if it mutates.

The world needs to find ways to increase its limited capacity to make a vaccine and plan for their immediate administration to contain any outbreak.

Greater cooperation is also needed between countries that have already been stricken by the virus.

Policy makers have to maintain adequate funding to track the virus and develop regional plans to isolate any outbreak and bidding wars between business and government for production of vaccines has to be avoided.

Southeast Asia's agriculture ministers have endorsed a regional plan to combat the flu and agreed to cooperate with international agencies so as to halt the disease before it becomes a pandemic.

Their plan includes surveillance of the disease and the setting up of an alert system, vaccinations, improved diagnostics and the creating of disease-free zones.

An Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) animal health trust fund has been formally established with pledges of US$2 million although another for bird flu has yet to materialize.

WHO said preparedness is extremely important.

But it emphasizes that the vaccination alone will not defeat the threat.

Efficient surveillance, bio-security and the slaughter of infected birds is also essential, it said.

WHO is creating an international stockpile of antiviral drugs for a rapid response to any pandemic.

The stockpile is meant to compliment other measures, including any national stockpiles.

Vietnam is among the first countries to have been threatened by bird flu and could be the center of any epidemic.

However, response to the danger seems confined to the government and public servants but not the people, especially those living in rural Vietnam where information about the threat is scanty and warnings of an epidemic go mostly ignored.

The ignorance is reinforced by the need of farmer households to sell their fowls.

The Health Ministry and the National Steering Committee for Prevention of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and other Serious Epidemics have warned that Vietnam faces the threat of a winter-spring bird flu outbreak.

The response have been a national action plan.

Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan reports that Vietnam has 600,000 Tamiflu doses in stock in preparation for any outbreak.

WHO will provide more medicine within 24 hours if required.

The Government has also issued directives to strengthen the guidelines for the slaughter of poultry and to ensure food safety and hygiene.

Violators face stern punishment.

The regulation shows that Vietnam's lawmakers understand the danger from the virus and will take action to ensure that it does not become a pandemic.

Despite warnings by scientists that people become infected through physical contact with sick birds -- dead or alive -- and their droppings, people continue to consume poultry as though well-cooked fowls are not risky.

Both Vietnam health officials and the WHO representatives have told people that they must abandon some habits to protect themselves from the virus.

But about 80 percent of Vietnamese live with poultry as they have for centuries.

And while some say they have stopped eating fowl the bird flu outbreak wanes, many -- particularly those who are remote and lack information -- defiantly vow not to change their habits.