Vietnam reported yesterday that four additional people -- one who died -- may have caught the bird flu ravaging the region's poultry, while China barred chicken imports to keep out the virus and the World Health Organization called for "greater urgency" in fighting it.
Doctors already have confirmed that the disease killed three people in Vietnam -- with as many as 18 cases linked to the virus -- and WHO experts were meeting Vietnamese Health Ministry officials yesterday to discuss how to contain the outbreak.
PHOTO: AP
The bird flu has infected millions of chickens in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, prompting their governments to order huge slaughters as poultry farms.
Beijing yesterday halted poultry imports from the three affected countries to China, following similar measures by its territory Hong Kong and by Cambodia earlier in the week.
"We are moving to a phase of greater urgency," said Pascale Brudon, WHO representative in Hanoi.
"There was a lot of awareness about the strong need to work quickly. Vietnamese officials are taking the matter very seriously," he said
The deadly virus -- highly contagious among chickens -- is believed to spread to humans through contact with infected birds, and there have been no reports of the disease spreading from person to person.
Officials also have said they believe there is no danger from eating properly cooked meat and eggs from infected birds.
However, regional WHO officials have warned that if human-to-human transmission occurs, it could turn avian flu into a deadlier epidemic than SARS.
Officials at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi said yesterday that a 31-year-old man from northern Thai Binh province, 100km southwest of Hanoi, died on Wednesday after contracting what doctors suspect was bird flu.
Three of his relatives were admitted to the tropical disease unit's isolation ward.
That brings the number of cases believed linked to bird flu in Vietnam to 18 -- with 13 deaths. WHO lab tests have confirmed that three of those who died had been infected with Influenza A, or the H5N1 flu strain, which has infected more than 1.4 million chickens in Vietnam.
Vietnamese officials are culling the infected birds at an estimated cost of US$2.7 million, agriculture officials said.
In Japan, officials prepared yesterday to bury 36,400 dead chickens confirmed to have the virus. The affected chickens were raised at a poultry farm in the town of Ato, about 800km southwest of Tokyo.
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