Northern Vietnam reports new bird flu case in ducks

HANOI, Jun 7 (Reuters) Bird flu spread to a duck farm in northern Vietnam last week, bringing to 16 the provinces and a city infected with the H5N1 virus, the government said today.

A total of 240 ducks died in Viet Tri city, the capital of Phu Tho province during the first four days of June. Health workers slaughtered the remaining 130 fowl as tests confirmed the H5N1 virus among the dead ducks, the Animal Health Department said in a report.

Phu Tho has been added to the government's bird flu watch list of 15 provinces and Can Tho city in the southern Mekong delta, following the latest outbreak.

Yesterday veterinarians found 80 dead ducks in a flock of 1,000 waterfowl in the central province of Quang Nam, one of the provinces which have reported outbreaks in birds since early May.

Phu Tho lies to the northwest of Vinh Phuc province where a 30-year-old man was last month confirmed by Vietnamese doctors as infected with bird flu, the first human case since November 2005.

He was taken to a hospital in Hanoi for intensive treatment.

Another man who works for a poultry slaughterhouse outside Hanoi was also confirmed to have the H5N1 virus last weekend.

''The health of the two patients has stabilised, they can breathe by themselves without a mask,'' Nguyen Duc Hien, head of the hospital treating the men, was quoted by state media as telling a government meeting yesterday.

Hien said that doctors suspected three more people taken to his facility on Tuesday had bird flu but that test results would only be available by Saturday.

Laboratory researchers said that in the past several weeks, they have tested about 10 samples a week for the virus.

The virus has killed 42 people out of 95 cases of infection in Vietnam since it emerged in late 2003. The World Health Organisation has not confirmed the most recent two infections.

Bird flu has been hitting more ducks in Vietnam since it re-surfaced early this year. The fowl can carry the virus without showing they are sick, making it harder to detect the problem. They spread the virus in their droppings while roaming from one rice field to another.

Globally the H5N1 virus has killed 189 people out of the 310 people it infected, the World Health Organisation said.

REUTERS GL HT1648