Bird flu again in Vietnam

Not too long ago, The United Nations World Health Organization was congratulating Vietnam on its success in controlling bird flu.

Unfortunately, high pathogenic avian influenza has re-appeared in the country. It's been found in ducks and geese in 3 southern provinces.

This corresponds to renewed outbreaks in China, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

This seems to indicate that because the H5N1 virus does reside within migrating waterfowl, reappear, spread by these ducks and geese.

This raises the question of how we can permanently control the virus. Those countries have done a good job of controlling the infection within domestic poultry -- but the real villain seems to be migrating birds.

Many wildlife lovers don't like to hear this conclusion. They prefer to blame the actions of people, including bird smugglers.

But it's unlikely that many people in small Vietnamese villages import exotic pet birds.

It's much more likely that H5N1 has ridden into them in the intestines of water fowl.

How can we eliminate HPAI from migrating water fowl without an environmental massacre?

Bird flu again in Vietnam



Vietnam Bird Flu
Vietnam Bird Flu

Bird flu news

The following link contains 3 separate stories.

The first is about the boy and girl who died from bird flu in Indonesia a week ago. Indonesia now is Number One in bird flu deaths, with a total of 44. Until recently, Vietnam held that title with 42.

But while Vietnam has aggressively fought bird flu, Indonesia has taken a much less determined path, and this is the result.

Yet Vietnam is not yet free of the high pathogenic avian influenza. Some was just found in ducks and geese in the provinces of Tien Giang, Long An and Ben Tre.

And in a followup a story that started several months ago, a Chinese soldier has definately been determined to be a bird flu death way back in 2003. He'd originally been declared dead of SARS, which was the scariest disease threat back then.

This article claims WHO says he's the first human case of avian influenza.

This makes no sense. We know that was a 3 year old boy in Hong Kong in May 1997. Perhaps he was the first case of bird flu death since the disease re-emerged in 2003.

bird flu news

What is a bird flu pandemic


Bird Flu News
Bird Flu News

Fighting bird flu in Indonesia

Finally, some good news about bird flu out of Indonesia.

The government says it's culled 5.7 million birds and has provided 262 million free vaccinations for chickens.

They also plan to stock up 44 hospitals with Tamiflu to treat bird flu victims with. Apparently, victims so far has gotten only basic medical attention and, hopefully, tender loving care. That's nice, but not sufficient.

Personally, I don't think much of Tamiflu, however. Also, nobody knows how much is necessary against bird flu. Also, it's supposed to be taken within two days of the onset of symptoms.

If doctors think a case of bird flu is really typhus (which happened to the 6 year old boy who died recently), it'll be too late to save them.

That's assuming they even get to a clinic or hospital that quickly. Poor farmers don't have much money for medical care, even for their children, so they must see that the condition is very serious first.

That's also assuming that the victim can get to treatment within the two days. People living far out in the boondocks may have to travel a day or day to get good medical treatment. And people with bird flu don't feel much like traveling.

Still, anything the Indonesian government is doing to fight bird flu should be given positive reinforcement.

fighting bird flu in Indonesia


Indonesian Bird Flu
Indonesian Bird Flu

Bird flu re-emergence in Cambodia

Until recently, it looked at though bird flu was under good control in all of Southeast Asia outside of Indochina.

But recently new cases among chickens have been reported in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and now Cambodia.

This is sad for the poor farmers involved who're going to lose their chickens. Hopefully no people die from these outbreaks, but that's always a possibility.

Cambodia is possibly the poorest of these countries (although it may be surpassed by Laos, since that country probably gets fewer tourists), so I hate to see it go there, though of course the H5N1 bird flu virus cares only about infecting more birds and people.

Cambodian bird flu

A few days ago I told you that you could read the new articles I wrote on bird flu site by going to the home page and scrolling down to the site map link at the bottom.

Well, the obvious thing to do is simply to link to the sitemap itself:

bird flu protection sitemap


Cambodian Bird Flu
Cambodian Bird Flu

Black market chicken flu vaccines in Thailand

Here's a warning on bird flu vaccines: in chickens, they work, but at the cost that the virus itself is not controlled.

That is, once a chicken has been vaccinated, that particular chicken is safe from an infection of high pathogenic avian influenza HPAI. But the virus is not killed. If some H5N1 virus gets inside the chicken, it stays there.

It can be spread to both other chickens and people through that chicken's excrement. And if, the chicken dies, the corpses can spread the virus. If somebody eats it without fully cooking it, they're at risk of catching bird flu.

So Thailand has tried to eliminate avian bird flu in its domestic chickens by culling all exposed flocks rather than injecting them with vaccines.

This has the advantage of keeping their eggs and poultry meat available for export.

However, since the recent new infections, small farmers are now taking matters into their own hands and buying black market, smuggled chicken flu vaccines. It's understandable, but a risk for the country as a whole.

bird flu chicken vaccinations


Blackmarket Bird Flu Vaccines
Blackmarket Bird Flu Vaccines

Bird flu fighting cooperation between Thailand and Laos

Bird flu is proving hard to stamp out on a permanent basis. Until recently, we thought Thailand had succeeded in getting rid of it. And Laos has not reported any avian flu infections in chickens in about two years.

Now, it is cropping up in both countries -- which share a long border separated by the Mekong River, as well as a common ancestry. They're closely related linquistically (if you know Thai or Lao, it's easy to pick up the other one) and culturally.

Historically, they've been separate since France colonized Laos late in the 19th century and made the Kingdom part of French Indochina along with Cambodia and Vietnam.

After World War II, it was caught up in the Cold War just like Cambodia and Vietnam, with a strong Communist movement called the Pathet Lao supported by the nearby Viet Minh and later North Vietnam.

And like Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos was conquered by the communists in April 1975. Fortunately, as tools of the Vietnamese, the Pathet Lao were more moderate than the Khmer Rouge. Even so, an estimated 800,000 people fled Laos from 1975 to the early 80s, including my ex-wife.

The country is now still officially communist, but in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union has become more moderate. My ex-wife tells me that her mother is now allowed to have servants and to rent out her property. Plus, they welcome visits by refugees bringing capitalist dollars and francs.

And now thanks to their proximity to either Thailand and Vietnam, they're threatened by avian influenza just as those countries are, though they're far poorer than Indonesia.

So it's good that Laos and Thailand are cooperating in fighting bird flu. The poor chicken farmers of both countries need all the help they can get, and the rest of us don't want the virus to mutate into something more contagious.

international bird flu

I have been busy lately revamping my bird flu web site. I've added new articles. You can read them by going to the main page and then scrolling down to the Sitemap link at the bottom.

Bird flu protection