Aug 15, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Vietnam's agriculture ministry today announced the detection of a poultry outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza in a province bordering China, a day after French officials reported that four wild ducks in Moselle had the virus.
The Vietnamese outbreak occurred at a farm in the northern province of Cao Bang, about 43 miles from the Chinese border, where 89 chickens and ducks died recently, Reuters reported today. Tests conducted in Hanoi confirmed the birds had the H5N1 virus, the report said.
Vietnam has had seven human H5N1 cases this year, including four deaths, according to news reports. However, five of the cases have not yet been confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO), whose current avian flu tally for Vietnam is 95 cases with 42 deaths.
Elsewhere, government officials in France said yesterday that four dead wild ducks found Aug 8 in the Moselle region in the eastern part of the country had tested positive for the H5N1 virus, the Associated Press (AP) reported today.
The outbreak is the third since early July, when dead wild swans found in Assenoncourt and Diane Capelle, both in the Moselle region, tested positive for the virus, according to a report from the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The infected wild ducks in the most recent outbreak were also found in the Diane Capelle area, the AP report said.
In other avian flu developments, the WHO yesterday confirmed Indonesia's latest human case, in a 29-year-old woman from Bali province who fell ill on Aug 3 and died Aug 12. She is Indonesia's 103rd case-patient, according to the WHO. The country has had 82 H5N1 deaths.
The WHO report said the woman's daughter had died Aug 3 after being hospitalized with a respiratory illness, but hospital officials did not suspect she had avian flu. The woman and her daughter had both been exposed to sick and dead poultry, the WHO reported.
Household and healthcare worker contacts who were exposed to the woman are being monitored, and all remain healthy, the WHO said.
Meanwhile, a 2-year-old girl from a neighboring home who was hospitalized on Aug 10 with suspicious respiratory symptoms does not have the H5N1 virus, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today. Ningrum, a doctor from Indonesia's avian flu information center, told AFP that the negative test results came back last night.
See also:
OIE reports on French outbreak
Aug 14 WHO report
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2007_08_14a/en/index.html
