Another person dies of H5N1, in a “Bird-Flu-Free” Province of Vietnam

 Vietnamese boy dies of bird flu  

 07/08/2007  The National Department of Preventative Health announced Tuesday, that Thanh Hoa province’s 15-year-old Cao Trong Toan died en route to Hanoi from the northern province for emergency treatment. 

On the 19th of last month, the patient’s family bought 20 geese to raise at home.Three days later all the geese had died and Toan developed a high fever. 

 

So another Vietnamese person, this time a 15 years old boy, has died.

The boy died in the province of Thanh Hoa.

The thing is, that Thanh Hoa was one of the provinces which had been confirmed by the Government of Vietnam, as a Bird-Flu-Free province only yesterday!

Please see the following: VietNamNet Bridge  reports the following today, 07/08/2007 :

Nation reins in bird flu, only three provinces still affected

Only three provinces across the nation remain infected by bird flu, dropping from a peak of 18 provinces struggling with the virus in May, said the Department of Animal Health yesterday.

The affected provinces include Dien Bien in the north, Quang Binh in the centre and Dong Thap in the south. Authorities said Quang Binh was well on the way to dropping off the list of bird flu-affected provinces, which will be achieved after being free of the virus for 21 days.According to the department, 63 out of 64 cities and provinces have completed or are implementing the first round of vaccination against bird flu in 2007. More than 160mil poultry have been vaccinated around the country.

Sources;

http://english.vietnamnet.vn/social/2007/08/727015/ 

http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=30773  

Pregnant Vietnamese Woman dies of Bird-Flu in a “Bird-Flu-Free Province”.

After repeatedly declaring many of its provinces free of Bird-flu, the Government of Vietnam has been forced to admit that H5N1 had been found in some of the Bird-Flu-free provinces.

A Country or a province in a Country is declared bird flu-free after it goes 21 consecutive days without a new case, according to the ministry.

Last week the Government of Vietnam finally informed the global community of nations, that “only three provinces are still plagued by bird flu – Dien Bien in the north, Quang Binh in the center and Dong Thap in the Mekong Delta region.”

That was of course before Bird flu has killed a Vietnamese woman who was seven months pregnant, who died in Ha Tay one of the Bird-flu-Free provinces!

She died in the Bach Mai hospital in Hanoi after being admitted from a farm in the northern province of Ha Tay, the largest poultry supplier to the country’s capital.

A doctor in Ha Tay province says there are no bird flu outbreaks in the area where she lived.

Her death brings the death toll in the country to three in less than two months.

Two people — a 20-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman — died in June of avian influenza, the first fatalities announced since November 2005.

Since May, six human cases have been reported here, three of them fatal.

This entire Bird-Flu-free and not Bird-flu-free drama has been played out by the Vietnamese Government, as if it was a Monty Python sketch.

(The following may not have taken place exactly as described below,  but as Monty Python could well have plated it. The overall effect would be the same though.)

“We have got another one!” The  Big Vietnemese Government Boss would shout “From today, at 3 PM exactly, Province number 9 is Bird-Flu-Free!”

A little later, some one would hesitantly whisper “ Sir, Bird-Flu has been found again in the province number 9″

“What! Number 9 again?”  the Big Boss official would thunder, “OK then, the ### Number 9 Province is NOT Bird-Flu-Free at this time”

“Mind you, the province number 9 is free of TB, Cholera and Malaria and many other deadly deceases. It just has a little bit of Bird-flu at this time”

And so on.

It was almost funny to see a Government behave in that way.

I say funny, but you know what I mean.

As I have been saying in this blog for a while, the World Governing bodies such as WHO were apparently OK with this nutty rule of declaring a country free of Bird-Flu, if no new cases were found for a period of 21 days.

Even worse is the rule of declaring a part of a country, such as a province to be bird flu free, if there have been no new cases of the H5N1 found in that particular province.

I ask you, since there are no custom checks or travel restrictions between provinces, how can a province be guaranteed to be free of infection, if the bordering province has H5N1 in its poultry and more importantly, in its wild birds?

The WHO folks have not replied to repeated requests for an explanation for their silence/acquiescence with this less than honest practice.

I had requested a comment from what I consider to be the two top blogs in this subject area, Effect Measure and H5N1 Croftsblogs, to comment on this mad situation.

Did not get a response from Effect Mesure.

Crawford Kilian of the H5N1 did reply.

He is a kind soul and a gentle one at that.

So while he seemed to be able to see the basic problem with the 21 day rule, he did not use his understated, but universally acknowledged authority in any way, to put pressure on the related institutions to rectify or at the very least re examine the this situation.

I would like to ask WHO and all of the great and powerful people, who had such a good time at the Pandemic flu SUMMIT, to re examine the 21 day rule for a country to be declared free of Bird-flu.

More importantly the option to declare part of a country free of Bird-flu needs to be urgently revisited.

 

Pig Disease kills People and Bird-Flu kills Ducks, In Bird-Flu-Free Vietnam!

It was only last week that Vietnam was busy declaring its provinces “Bird-Flu-Free”.

The criterion for this Bird-Flu-Free status was the completely illogical “no infection in any 21 consecutive days” rule.

How did this rule come about?

Who was responsible for this ruling?

Does the World Health Organisation agree with this totally mad criterion?

If not then why is there a deafening silence from all concerned about this rule?

Discounting the main line press and the scare mongering blogs, why no comments on this subject from the two Top bird flu blogs, Effect Measure and Crawford Kilian’s H5N1 blog?

The arbitrary 21 day ruling for a virus such as the H5N1 is nothing more than a political and commercial con trick, seemingly backed by the WHO and other such institutions.

In the mean time the “Bird-Flu Free Vietnam” is now rife with the H5N1 virus, “killing hundreds of ducks at a farm at the weekend” according to the Vietnam Government.

In addition to the above, two people have died in northern Vietnam from a pig disease while another virus has been killing thousands of pigs in recent weeks in the central region, government and media reports said on Monday.

On Sunday, the state-run Vietnam Television said that pig raisers in Quang Nam province had thrown hundreds of dead pigs into a local river, causing serious water pollution near the UNESCO-recognised tourist town of Hoi An.

The Pig-Disease-Free criterion (as to how many days without a new infection of the Pig-Disease would make Vietnam Pig-Disease-Free) is not known as yet.

Email inquiries regarding the Pig-Disease-Free criterion to the World Health Organisation have not received a reply.

As previously mentioned in this blog, this panic to be perceived as Bird-flu-Free, is due to the pressures from the local tourism and other commercial interests.

The idea behind the declaration of Vietnam or part of Vietnam as “Bird-flu-Free”, is really an assurance by the Government of Vietnam to the importers of poultry and other related goods from Vietnam, that there is no possibility of any contamination of its poultry with the H5N1 virus.

The same assurance is implied in this declaration by the Government of Vietnam, that it is 100% safe for you and I to bring our children to Vietnam for their holiday.

Vietnam’s president Nguyen Minh Triet

Here are links to two news items related to the above:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HAN235672.htm  

http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=30280 

Bird-Flu back again, in Bird-Flu-Free Vietnam!!!

The Government of Vietnam has been declaring parts of the country Bird-Flu-Free, using a criterion which is deceptive and misleading at best.

Under this totally illogical criterion, any country or a province of a country, is “recognized as officially bird flu-free” if no new cases of the H5N1 virus have been discovered in any 21 consecutive days.

As previously mentioned in this blog, this panic to be perceived as Bird-flu-Free, is due to the pressures from the local tourism and other commercial interests.

The idea behind the declaration of Vietnam or part of Vietnam as “Bird-flu-Free”, is really an assurance by the Government of Vietnam to the importers of poultry and other related goods from Vietnam, that there is no possibility of any contamination of its poultry with the H5N1 virus.

Vietnam’s president Nguyen Minh Triet 

The same assurance is implied in this declaration by the Government of Vietnam, that it is 100% safe for you and I to bring our children to Vietnam for their holiday.

Therefore, when after all these declarations by the Government, there is an outbreak of the H5N1 virus in the areas declared to have been Bird-Flu Free by the Government of Vietnam, then I believe that the Government of Vietnam could be held liable for such deceptive statements and declarations.

What is worse the World Health Organisation has remained silent on this very important matter, giving the impression that the WHO is complicit in the above deception.

So it came to pass, that the Dong Thap province of Vietnam, which had recently been declared as Bird-Flu-free by the Government of Vietnam, is now once again infested with the Bird-Flu Virus.

Vietnam’s Animal Health Department announced Wednesday 18th July 2007, that H5N1 virus has returned in the Dong Thap province, infecting and killing domestic poultry.

The avian flu still plagues six provinces including Bac Giang, Thai Binh, Ca Mau, Ninh Binh, Dien Bien, and Dong Thap.  

If the WHO is to retain any credibility whatsoever with the people around the world, it needs to address this madness immediately.

 Here is a link to the news item from Thanh Nien News:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=30115

The Bird-Flu Virus beginning to give up its Secrets!

Amid heightened concern over a possible epidemic of bird flu in humans, scientists in the United States and Taiwan are reporting critical new insights into the architecture of a key enzyme in the H5N1 avian influenza virus that enables the virus to spread. 

Rommie E. Amaro and colleagues focused on what has been termed the “hot pocket,” or more technically “the 150-loop.” This chain of amino acids forms a cavity in the neuraminidase enzyme that facilitates H5N1’s spread. Anti-flu drugs called neuraminidase inhibitors work by entering and binding to the hot pocket, almost like a hand fitting into a glove.

In the new study, researchers report that the hot pocket actually can have internal shapes substantially different than previously believed. That new structural understanding of the 150-loop could be valuable in efforts to design new and more effective anti-flu drugs, they state. Drugs capable of fitting more snugly into the cavity could yield a class of neuraminidase inhibitors that are more effective against H5N1-like flu viruses.

The report is scheduled for the June 20 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The title of the article is “Remarkable Loop Flexibility in Avian Influenza N1 and Its Implications for Antiviral Drug Design.”

Here is a link to the original news item : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070618130937.htm

Vietnam Bird-Flu victim Raised Fighting Cocks and Ducks!

The Deputy Health Minister of Vietnam, Trinh Quan Huan has confirmed that a 20 year old Vietnamese man, died of the Bird-Flu, bringing the death toll to 43.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung 

“Tests confirmed a 20-year-old man from northern Ha Tay province died from the H5N1 bird flu virus a week ago,” the Vietnam News Agency quoted Vice Minister of Health Trinh Quan Huan as saying Saturday at a bird flu meeting in Hanoi.

He died of the H5N1 strain of influenza type A at the Ha Noi-based National Contagious and Tropical Diseases Hospital on June 10.

The man got ill on 2nd June, and after being admitted to the hospital, died on 10th June. The news agency also said that the vicinity has been disinfected and cleared of all possible signs of bird flu virus.

Further to our recent post in this blog, Fighting cocks, the source of Malaysian Bird-Flu? it appears that the victim was in close contact with Fighting Cocks!

“The reports revealed that the man’s family reared about two dozen fighting cocks along with ducks. However, the television report did not say how the victim got the H5N1 infection.”

Vietnam was hailed as the best region where the measures were strict and 100% safe, leading the international health experts say that the country is like a role model in keeping the H5N1 virus at bay.

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.

“This is not going to go away,” said WHO’s Vietnam communications officer Dida Connor, speaking before news of the human death. “There is a sense of complacency which is potentially catastrophic if it was to increase.”

We hope that the Malaysian Health Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek will take note of that remark from the WHO, before going ahead with his decision to declare Malaysia “Bird-Flu-Free”. 

 Here is a link to the article in Thanh Nien, one of the most prestigious and influential newspapers in Vietnam:http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=29123