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.
PHOTO: EPA
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.
However, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has said it does not believe cull orders are being fully implemented because poultry owners are reluctant to kill their sources of income.
The UN agency has said it will help fund compensation payments.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS