Clutching squealing chickens or carrying them in straw baskets on the back of bicycles, scores of Vietnamese villagers dutifully deliver their home-bred poultry to be injected with bird flu vaccine.
NAM TRIEU, Vietnam — Clutching squealing chickens or carrying them in straw baskets on the back of bicycles, scores of Vietnamese villagers dutifully deliver their home-bred poultry to be injected with bird flu vaccine.
To see rural health workers in caps, masks and gowns applying the serum one by one to chickens and ducks in Nam Trieu commune, about 30 miles south of Hanoi, is to appreciate Vietnam's enormous task in trying to stop the deadly bird flu virus from spreading across its borders and beyond.
Scenes this month in Nam Trieu in Ha Tay province will be repeated in other hamlets across Vietnam until the end of November in the first mass vaccination program for 60 million chickens and waterfowl owned by 3.5 million breeders.
"It's a logistical nightmare," said Anton Rychener, director of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization in Vietnam, where the virus which first swept across much of Asia in late 2003 has killed 44 people, 23 of them since it returned last December.
"It's very, very difficult. It is complex and it requires quite a bit of determination and funds."
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More than in any other country, what happens in the fight against the deadly H5N1 strain of the disease in poor, densely populated Vietnam is vitally important to preventing a global avian flu pandemic, public health experts say.
Experts predict the virus could kill up to 7 million people globally within a short time if it is not contained in Southeast Asia and mutates into a form that is easily transmitted between humans, which now it is not.
"This is not a Vietnamese problem; this is a global public health problem where Vietnam is at the front line," said WHO's Vietnam director Hans Troedsson.
"But it's not going to be contained in Vietnam if we get a pandemic of avian influenza. Within a very short time span it will spread all over the world."
So far, almost all the 64 bird flu victims in Asia -- 12 Thais, 4 Cambodians and 4 Indonesians have also died of it -- are known to have caught the virus directly from infected fowl.
VIRUS ENTRENCHED
Vietnam, with relatively limited resources, is carrying a huge burden in organizing the first poultry vaccination campaign.
Bird flu is entrenched in the Red River Delta in the North and the Mekong Delta in the South.
With some technical assistance and some money from abroad, the communist-run country's provincial People's Committees plan to vaccinate chickens and ducks in 47 of the 64 provinces and cities before winter, when H5N1 seems to thrive best.
Health experts do not know enough about H5N1 and the vaccinations may not work, a prospect that haunts health officials striving to keep it out of the human population.
"In this campaign, we target mostly breeding birds and we have to vaccinate them twice to make sure," said Ha Tay province animal health director Nguyen Huy Dang. "Even with this vaccination we cannot guarantee they will be 100 percent safe."
Asked about concerns that a chicken or waterfowl that is vaccinated might carry the virus without symptoms in the same way that occurred with wild ducks, FAO's Rychener said:
"We do know that this happens not only among wild ducks. We have tested in the first half of this year 10,000 ducks, 70 percent of them were infected without showing symptoms. They were mostly domesticated ... it has already happened."
Dang said vaccination is just one part of the strategy. The others include information and training, disinfecting possibly contaminated markets and other places, quality control and enforcement of poultry transportation rules.
For all of Vietnam's rapid economic growth and urban expansion of recent years, 76 percent of its 82 million people still live in the countryside. One of the biggest challenges is identifying and tracking sick birds raised in village backyards.
The culture of keeping flocks of chickens for the pot or the market cannot be changed overnight.
Chicken farmer Nguyen Thi Xuan and duck farmer Pham Cong Hien in Nam Trieu commune know what is at stake.
"This vaccination is not only for chickens but also for people," said Xuan, 38, beside one of two vaccination stands where officials recorded every needle stick and every owner's name.
Xuan brought 10 chickens enclosed in a straw basket fastened above the rear wheel of a bicycle. "If the chickens still get infected after the vaccination, we will never keep them or eat them. There will be no regrets about that."
LOSSES
Animal health workers visited Hien's farm to vaccinate his 700 ducks, raised in ponds alongside rice fields lined with banana trees.
Hien, 44, said he is willing to risk losing income while waiting for the 30-day incubation period for duck eggs to pass.
"We can accept losses and hope to recover them later on," Hien said. "I believe that the vaccination today can help prevent the disease from spreading."
The FAO's Rychener said the vaccines developed in China and the Netherlands cost $44 million. "In order to get an immediate handle on bird flu including vaccination, we need to spend about $63 million as soon as possible," he said.
China has also found the same H5N1 strain in poultry. It has reached six regions of Russia and Kazakhstan.
Source: Reuters
