A persisting bird flu epidemic in Vietnam poses a scientific challenge but also tests the country's bureaucracy, which has so far proven incapable of dealing with the seriousness of the disease, analysts say.
Apart from the need for research on vaccines and the surveillance mechanism necessary to detect possible mutations of the virus that has killed dozens of people across in the country in the past year, a rapid response to the first clinical signs of the disease is of the essence, they stress.
But although Vietnam's government has taken the matter seriously, it has been unprepared in practical terms. In the vast country of 82 million people, many residents are beyond the authorities' easy reach.
Despite public warnings and regular media coverage, a large part of the rural population remains under-informed. Many people eat infected poultry and do not know how to cope with an epidemic.
"The awareness of the people and the poultry raising conditions are limited. In many places, the epidemic surveillance network is non-existent," vice minister of health Tran Chi Liem said in an official daily last Thursday.
Informing central authorities of the first clinical signs of the disease is an even greater problem. In passing from the village, commune, district and province to capital Hanoi, the message can get garbled or even lost.
"I think that communication is the most essential criteria in eliminating the epidemic. The village level must provide information on the epidemic as quickly as possible so that higher levels could then decide on immediate treatment methods," said Nguyen Duy Long, head of the animal health department of Long An province.
But in several provinces, he believes, "the higher authorities don't pay proper attention to the epidemic, leading to the lack of awareness on its danger at the lower level."
As a developing country, Vietnam faces other limitations. Basic equipment such as telephones, facsimile machines and computers are often unavailable.
"To a large extent, it is a question of resources," said Anton Rychener, representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Hanoi. "People don't realize that the decentralized authorities are pretty much left on their own."
A recent rumor of an epidemic outbreak in a village in central Vietnam highlights the system's weaknesses in dealing with the disease.
The official media said some 200 people were affected in a suspected outbreak in Chau Hoa commune of Quang Binh province, where a five-year-old boy had earlier tested positive for the H5N1 virus.
There was no confirmation of the report from medical authorities. But many experts noted that the press had got wind of the disease affecting humans before the regular health channels.
Moreover, the central authorities in Hanoi were never told that the commune's poultry had been decimated by the virus in early February.
"Our veterinary officials knew that there were some sick chickens that died during Tet," said Phan Huy Hoang, deputy chairperson of Chau Hoa commune in Quang Binh province.
"We did not know that it was bird flu so we did not report to the higher level," he said.
The communication gap has not gone unnoticed among World Health Organization (WHO) experts, who have complained of insufficient data in Vietnam.
"We have discussed the problem of reporting procedures to try to get a better understanding of what is happening," WHO country representative Hans Troedsson said.
But the Vietnamese authorities were far from being alone in this regard.
"It is difficult even in every developed country to detect cases at the households level," he said.
The challenge for the scientists is to breach the system's inefficiency.
"The major problem is the delay in reporting," said one foreign expert, requesting anonymity. But "it is rather bureaucracy than incompetence."
Patrice Gautier, the Vietnam representative of Agronomists and Veterinarians Without Borders (VSF), agreed but said the aid strategy needed to be changed.
There is an urgent need to facilitate contacts between private and public services on the ground and to set up a system for information exchange among different levels, he said.
"It is useless having a new laboratory if nobody sends any samples there, nor is there any point inviting foreign experts if they've no idea what's happening on the ground," Gautier said.
Last Friday, Vietnamese authorities officially launched a national campaign to clean up farms and try to wipe out the bird flu virus.
But Chau Hoa village, one of the worst affected, was not told of the campaign.
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