Vietnam sees endto bird flu epidemic

Vietnam, which has reported 15 human deaths from bird flu, said on Tuesday the nearly two-month-old outbreak has been contained and that it hopes to declare an end to the epidemic by the end of March.

As of the beginning of March, 53 of the 57 infected provinces and cities in Vietnam have recorded no new outbreaks of the H5N1 virus in the past six to 26 days, the agriculture ministry said in a statement.

“We have by now contained the epidemic,” Bui Quang Anh, director of the ministry’s animal health department, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The ministry estimated that by the end of March, “all the provinces in the country will have declared the bird flu epidemic over.”

The government has said an area can be declared free from bird flu 30 days after the cull of its last infected poultry. Seven people have also died from the virus in Thailand and all the human infections came from contact with sick birds.

In Vietnam, about 38 million poultry, or 15 percent of the country’s total, have died of bird flu or been culled, resulting in hardship for thousands of farmers. The disease spread to nearly all of Vietnam’s 64 provinces and major cities.

The World Health Organization has said it does not have a simple formula for declaring the epidemic over, unlike last year’s Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

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Countries were removed from the SARS list when they had no new cases for 20 consecutive days.

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“It’s not as easy as SARS,” said WHO spokeswoman in Hanoi Maria Cheng, when asked for a definition. She said that because the disease jumped from animals to humans, control of the disease would depend on how quickly it stopped spreading in animals.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which has been providing expert advice and funds during the crisis, estimates about 100 million poultry have died or been culled in the region.

Agriculture Minister Le Huy Ngo suggested total losses from the bird flu in Vietnam could top the three trillion dong ($191 million).

“That is an immediate calculation while the comprehensive one has yet to be made,” Ngo told reporters on Tuesday.