International disease experts grappled yesterday to contain a bird flu outbreak in Vietnam that has killed at least five people and triggered alarm bells across Asia in the run-up to the Lunar New Year.
Six people from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including three epidemiologists, flew into Hanoi late Monday to help the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Vietnamese authorities.
"These are people who are specifically trained to come into situations like this running," said Bob Dietz, the UN health agency's spokesman.
The bird flu outbreak, which was first detected early this month, has cast a shadow over Tet, the Vietnamese festival marking tomorrow's start to the Lunar New Year.
Dietz, however, said the WHO had been assured by the government that it will not take its eyes off the crisis during the week-long holiday when the entire country virtually grinds to a halt.
The WHO spokesman, meanwhile, said a constant stream of patients continued to be admitted to two hospitals in Hanoi with respiratory symptoms.
"This doesn't necessarily mean we are seeing more H5N1 cases. They are being tested for the disease and this is a lengthy process," he said.
"But this is not a valid indication of what is going on in the country. It is a very narrow window. The situation could be far worse elsewhere or it could be better," he said.
The five deaths in Vietnam confirmed to have been from the H5N1 virus have occurred in the north, baffling experts as to why no cases have been reported in the south where the infection rate among poultry is high.
Vietnamese health officials have attributed at least six other deaths at the two Hanoi hospitals to the disease. Nine patients are currently being treated at the Central Pediatric Hospital with suspected bird flu.
The latest victim was an eight-year-old girl from the northern province of Ha Tay, who died on Saturday.
No confirmed or suspected deaths have been reported in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, which are all coping with their own bird flu outbreaks.
The WHO believes the five victims in Vietnam contracted the H5N1 virus through contact with droppings from sick birds. It says there is still no evidence of human-to-human transmission.
But the UN agency has warned that if the virus mutates to travel through human contact, it could spread rapidly, triggering a far greater health crisis than last year's SARS outbreak, which killed almost 800 people worldwide.
Based on historical patterns, the WHO says influenza pandemics can be expected to occur, on average, three to four times each century when new virus subtypes emerge and are readily transmitted from person to person.
An estimated 40 to 50 million people died around the world from the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. This was followed by pandemics in 1957-1958 and 1968-1969.
Experts agree that another influenza pandemic is inevitable and possibly imminent.
Alerted by the WHO to the seriousness of the problem, the government on Monday instructed local authorities to step up efforts to raise awareness among the population about bird flu and its impact on human health.
It also ordered all poultry within a 3km radius from where infected birds were detected to be culled and the establishment of a 10km-isolation zone around those areas.
More than 2 million chickens have died or have been slaughtered so far.
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