20 February 2006
As avian flu advances across Europe towards the UK, public health experts in the Far East claimed the first significant victory against the H5N1 virus since the current outbreak began two years ago.
Vietnam, the worst affected country in the world with 93 human cases and 42 deaths, has become the first to successfully contain the disease that threatens to become a global human pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation.
No new cases of avian flu have been reported in humans in Vietnam since last November and in birds since last December, Hans Troedsson, director of the WHO in Hanoi said.
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"It is not inevitable that it has to be H5N1. I am cautiously optimistic - more than I was two years ago - that
won't be caused by H5N1 because countries like Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand have been able to contain it." But Dr Troedsson warned that the H5N1 virus was almost certainly still in Vietnam, and vigilance was essential. Ducks can carry the virus without showing symptoms and previous research has demonstrated it can persist in the soil and water. Monitoring had " improved greatly" over the past two years as a result of action taken by the Vietnamese government but co-ordination between the ministries of health and agriculture had still to be improved, he said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article346511.ece
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