# 898
Sometimes, you can be a victim of your own success. For more than a year, Vietnam was hailed as the poster child for bird flu containment. They had done what few infected countries had managed to do, they had largely controlled the outbreaks and no new human cases had been reported for more than a year.
Then, starting a few months ago, the wheels fell off.
Vietnam now has 18 provinces battling outbreaks, and at least 5 people infected, with one fatality this month.
This from the Thanh Nien News.
Vietnam steps up fight after first bird flu death since 2005
With tests confirming the first human bird flu death in Vietnam since 2005, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has ordered for urgent measures to contain the disease’s spread.
Dung told a meeting of the national bird flu committee Saturday that efforts should be intensified to raise public awareness of preventive measures and close all poultry farms failing to meet safety standards.
He urged local authorities to tighten checks on the transport and slaughter of poultry to contain the spread and continue to vaccinate poultry.
Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan confirmed that a 20-year old man from Ha Tay province, bordering Hanoi, had died of bird flu on June 10.
A preliminary diagnosis of bird flu was made June 2 and the man was admitted to Hanoi’s National Contagious and Tropical Diseases Institute six days later.
He became the first Vietnamese to die of the deadly virus in 17 months.
His death brought to 43 the number of people who have died of bird flu in Vietnam.
Four other people were reported this month to be infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus. Two have recovered and two are undergoing treatment.
However, none of the five cases, including the fatality, has yet been confirmed by the World Health Organization as bird flu.
Vietnam, once the country worst hit by the disease, contained earlier outbreaks through mass vaccination campaigns, culls of millions of poultry, and public education campaigns.
But the virus has come back strongly this year, hitting scores of poultry farms in an unusual summer outbreak, especially in the densely populated northern Red River delta region.
Outbreaks have been reported since early May in 18 of the country’s 64 provinces and cities, mostly among vaccinated ducks and other waterfowl not getting preventive shots.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently blamed the surge on unvaccinated ducks grazing in newly harvested rice paddies after Vietnam lifted in March a ban on waterfowl hatching.
Experts warn that ducks can be "silent carriers" of bird flu, spreading the virus through their feces as they roam across rice fields and ponds while seldom showing symptoms of illness themselves.
