Thursday, April 06, 2006
Vietnam finds bird flu in poultry from China
April 6 (Reuters) - Vietnam has found the bird flu virus in chickens smuggled from China, the first case in poultry since December, officials said on Thursday.
The state-run Vietnam Economic Times newspaper reported that Animal Health Institute tests confirmed the presence of the H5 virus component in chickens seized in the northern border province of Lang Son, 154 km (96 miles) north of Hanoi.
It was not immediately known if the virus was the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed over 100 people in parts of Asia and the Middle East since 2003.
Institute officials could not be reached for comment but a provincial official said smuggling was tough to prevent.
“The smugglers come in small groups and by various small ways so it’s been difficult to stop all of them,” an anti-smuggling taskforce official said by telephone from Lang Son, which borders Guangxi province in southern China.
The newspaper said further bird flu tests were under way on samples taken from 40 smuggled chickens seized in Quang Ninh province, which also borders China.