Vietnam intensifies bird flu prevention - VIETNAM - Vietnam will take more drastic measures on bird flu prevention to bring the disease under control by 2006 or 2007 and eliminate it by 2010, local newspaper Vietnam News reported on Tuesday.

The country will ban raising poultry in some inner cities and urban areas, including Hanoi capital city, Ho Chi Minh city, Hai Phong northern city and Hue central city, and isolate fowl production establishments from residential areas, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Bui Ba Bong said at a conference reviewing bird flu prevention on Monday.

Vietnam will extend a ban on hatching and raising waterfowls until June 30 to the end of this year, he added, noting that local farmers will also not be allowed freely breed waterfowls in fields.

In addition, the country will use bird flu vaccines on flocks of chicken and waterfowls in southern Tien Giang province and northern Nam Dinh province on the trial basis this year.

At the conference, the Health Ministry asked the government to invest in building two more bird flu testing laboratories which cost some 80 billion Vietnamese dong (VND) (nearly 5.1 million US dollars).

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has pledged to fund Vietnam 4 million dollars to build the laboratories and 2.5 million dollars to redevelop its poultry sector.

Bird flu has pumped into 71 Vietnamese people, and killed 36 ofthem since December 2003, according to the health ministry. Meanwhile, the disease has killed or led to the forced culling of some 46 million fowls, causing a total loss of some 3.5 trillion VND (222.9 million dollars).

Source: Xinhua News Agency - 19th April 2005