# 826
A few short months ago, Vietnam was hailed as a success story in their fight against the H5N1 virus, and rightly so. They'd gone more than a year without a reported human infection, and the number of outbreaks in poultry had decreased dramatically.
Last February, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs was ready to declare the country free of the virus.
All too quickly, the situation has changed.
This from Reuters.
Vietnam issues warning over bird flu spread
Wed 30 May 2007, 9:18 GMT
(Updates with agriculture minister warning provinces)
HANOI, May 30 (Reuters) - Vietnam is on the brink of another bird flu epidemic in poultry, the agriculture minister told provincial authorities on Wednesday after the H5N1 virus has spread rapidly over the past month.
The virus has infected ducks and chickens in 11 provinces and Can Tho city in May at the beginning of summer. The development is unusual because experts say the virus normally appears to thrive best in cool temperatures and weakens in warmer weather.
Last week, the Southeast Asian country reported its first human case of H5N1 bird flu virus infection in a year and a half, a 30-year-old man in a province neighbouring Hanoi.
"The recent outbreaks were found mainly in waterflowl flocks that have not been vaccinated," Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said in what was described as an urgent telegraph to People's Committees in all 64 provinces and cities.
"Now the development of the epidemic is very complicated. The risk of the epidemic's further development and spreading on a large scale is very high," Phat's message said.
It called for the vaccination of "100 percent of ducks".
Bird flu has killed 42 people in Vietnam since it re-surfaced in Asia in late 2003.
The communist-run country took drastic steps in 2004 and 2005 to control the nationwide spread of the virus, including mass vaccination of poultry and banning the sale of birds in markets in major cities.
But it was flared up repeatedly in rural areas, including a number of southern provinces early this year.
