Vietnam will join hands with other countries to do research and come up with solutions to fight against H5N1 bird flu, according to a seminar in HCMC.
Vietnam will join hands with other countries to do research and come up with solutions to fight against H5N1 bird flu, according to a seminar in HCMC.
The three-day seminar on policy to prevent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N1 held by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will wrap up tomorrow.
Diep Kinh Tan, deputy agriculture minister, said Vietnam is one of the nations that suffer the most from bird flu. Therefore, cooperating with experienced countries in bird flu control will help Vietnam make effective plans to cope with the disease in the coming time.
The affected countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, China and Egypt will exchange information to conduct research and prevent the spread of the infectious disease to other nations.
A new variant of H5N1 virus called clade 2.3.2.1 has migrated into Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, East Asia and South Asia, invalidating the bird flu vaccines applied in certain countries such as Vietnam. All the human bird flu cases are poultry to human transmission, said the agriculture ministry.
“The H5N1-type avian flu virus still exists in many nations. Therefore, the virus is considered a threat of a possible H5N1 human pandemic,” said a report of the ministry.
In the past decade, around 300 million poultry infected with bird flu were culled worldwide, almost equal to the total poultry flock of Vietnam. Some 60% of the 602 human cases around the world were reported dead.
The agriculture ministry has worked with Cambodia and China to develop a cooperation program for avian flu prevention and control in each nation, including a research on effective vaccines against H5N1 virus variants.
(Source: SGT)
