Bird flu confirmed in chickens in northern Vietnam

HANOI, Feb 26 (Reuters) Vietnam confirmed a bird flu outbreak in chickens in a northern province only two weeks after it announced the disease had been contained, state media reported today.

The online newspaper VnExpress (www.vnexpress.net) quoted the director of the northern province of Hai Duong's animal health department, Dong Van Chuc, as saying tests on a flock of about 10,500 chickens confirmed the presence of a bird flu virus.

Around 70 chickens died from bird flu a week ago, Chuc said.

The entire flock was immediately culled last Sunday and no new infection had been detected since then, he said.

He did not say if it was the H5N1 virus that has killed millions of poultry in Vietnam since it resurfaced in Asia in 2003. The virus has killed 42 people in Vietnam and 167 worldwide.

On February. 13, the Agriculture Ministry said bird flu had been contained more than two months after the H5N1 virus re-emerged in poultry in the southern Mekong Delta region, but officials had said cases could emerge elsewhere in the country.

Vietnam, which has recorded the second-highest number of human deaths from H5N1 after Indonesia, has not had a human case since November. 2005.

The Animal Health Department said in a report on Monday that all the Mekong Delta areas where poultry had been infected since December have passed a period of 34 days without a new case.

Agriculture officials have said new outbreaks could hit the Southeast Asian country in March after a ban on hatching waterfowl is lifted at the end of this month and when the effect of the most recent poultry vaccination phase expires.

The virus has been found mainly in ducks in Vietnam. Some ducks can carry the virus without showing symptoms, excreting it in their droppings as they paddle through muddy rice paddies looking for insects and left-over grain.

Neighbouring Laos has found its first suspected human case of bird flu in a 15-year-old girl from an area where the virus broke out in poultry two weeks ago, official media said today.

REUTERS SAM RK2046