Bird flu kills more ducks in northern Vietnam

HANOI, May 30 (Reuters) Bird flu has spread to another duck farm in northern Vietnam, killing 2,120 fowl which had not been vaccinated against the H5N1 virus, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Tests confirmed the H5 component of the virus in the 14-day-old ducklings in the farm outside Haiphong city last week, the second outbreak in the area, the ministry's Animal Health Department said in a report seen today.

Animal health workers slaughtered the remaining 1,200 ducklings, bringing the total number of birds killed by the virus and slaughtered this month around the country to nearly 50,000.

The virus has infected ducks and chickens in nine provinces and Can Tho city in May at the beginning of summer, which is unusual as experts say the virus appears to thrive best in cool temperatures and weakens in warmer weather.

A 30-year-old man contracted the disease in northern Vietnam, doctors confirmed last week, the first human infection since November 2005.

Bird flu has killed 42 people in Vietnam since it re-surfaced in Asia in late 2003. The virus returned to poultry in the south late last year and early this year.

While more than half of Vietnam's 64 provinces and cities have completed the first phase of poultry vaccinations against bird flu, all the infections found so far were among those which were left out of the nationwide campaign.

Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat said yesterday that all waterfowl must be vaccinated or slaughtered to help stop bird flu from spreading.

Phat told a government committee for bird flu that he and his deputy, Bui Ba Bong, would supervise a new month-long campaign against the disease starting on Friday, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

REUTERS CS SBA BST0711