January 6th, 2009 Storks H5N1 confirmed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
http://www.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/contentView.do?contentType=EDITORIAL&programId=1073750968&articleType=&contentId=1287223&BV_SessionID=@@@@1515394178.1154692096@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccckaddihjmdegkcefecfikdghodgik.0
4 August 11:51 hrs IST
Bird flu may have hit storks in Ho Chi Minh City
HANOI (Reuters) - Preliminary tests on wild storks at a theme park in Ho Chi Minh City showed the birds might be infected with an avian influenza virus, a Vietnamese official said on Friday.
Huynh Huu Loi, director of the city's Animal Health Department, said more tests were being done to see if they had the H5N1 virus which has killed 42 people in Vietnam since 2003 but has not resurfaced for nearly eight months.
"We have yet to look deep enough into the H5 component of bird flu virus, but the first results found the storks have influenza type A," Loi said.
H5N1 is an influenza type-A virus.
The management of the park had been asked to destroy 53 storks, he added.
Wild birds are natural hosts of bird flu viruses and often don't show symptoms but can pass the viruses to poultry. H5N1 can kill chickens within 24 hours of infection.
Vietnamese officials say a failure to control waterfowl, which can be silent carriers of bird flu, made the country vulnerable to new outbreaks and wild birds believed to carry H5N1 would soon migrate from the north, raising the risk of infection.
| http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289945.html Vietnamese city taking preventive measures against bird flu |
| http://www.flutrackers.com/images/3zoom.gif http://www.flutrackers.com/images/plus.gif (javascript:void(0);)http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/images/spacer.gif http://www.flutrackers.com/images/minus.gif (javascript:void(0);) |
Vietnam (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/vietnam.html)'s southern Ho Chi Minh City is taking preventive measures after reports that 53 storks in a large park in its outskirts are infected with bird flu (http://www.flutrackers.com/zhuanti/Zhuanti_380.html) virus, newspaper Saigon Liberation in Hanol reported Friday. The city's Veterinary Bureau has asked the Suoi Tien Park to cull the 53 storks whose specimens have been tested positive to the virus, detoxificate bird cages, and isolate them to prevent potential spread of the disease. To prevent potential outbreaks of the disease among fowls and humans, Vietnam is intensifying surveillance; management over transport, trade and import of poultry and related products at border gates; preparation for sufficient supply of relevant medicines and equipment, border quarantine activities; enhancement of public awareness about the potential relapse of bird flu, and vaccination among fowls nationwide against bird flu viruses. Vietnam, which currently has to import bird flu vaccines for poultry, mainly from China, plans to mass use vaccines developed by itself in 2008. Two local firms have so far produced 200,000 doses of bird flu vaccines on trial basis, according to the Department of Animal Health under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/organs/statecouncil.shtml#agr) and Rural Development. Vietnam had a total poultry population of 254 million by late 2002, and it has annually grown by an average of 6.5 percent. Bird flu outbreaks, starting in the country in December 2003, have killed and led to the forced culling of dozens of millions of fowls. The last outbreak of bird flu among poultry in Vietnam was in December 2005, said the department. Source: Xinhua |
#If you have any other info about this subject , Please add it free.# |
