Vietnam's bird flu success story

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 10/17/2006 10:28 AM | Opinion

Chan Nhut Trung spent his entire savings, plus a small loan, to build a modern and hygienic slaughterhouse outside Ho Chi Minh City in 2003.

Employing 200 people, he has an average of 10,000 chickens and ducks killed daily.

""Chickens and ducks are good business because consumption here is quite high,"" Trung said.

The slaughtering facility saved Trung's poultry business from possible disaster.

After bird flu struck the nation, the government issued a ban on the sale of live chickens at markets. Trung's livelihood had depended on supplying live chickens and ducks to those markets. Just like in Indonesia, many customers preferred to choose live fowl at the markets and kill them at home.

With the slaughterhouse, the ban posed no threat to his income.

""What matters to me is to see that my employees don't lose their jobs and that they can work safely,"" he said.

Vietnam experienced 42 human deaths during three waves of bird flu outbreaks from 2004 to 2005; losses amounted to US$127 million.

In addition to the ban on selling live chickens in city markets, the government ordered a nationwide cull. The tough approach reaped praise from many quarters, as Vietnam succeeded in containing the flu's spread and preventing what could have been many more deaths.

Trinh Quan Huan, an assistant health minister, said the country first looked to the lessons it learned during the earlier battle with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). That turned out to be of limited value; bird flu required a lot more than alerts at hospitals and airports.

""Orders to cull sick chickens and birds were issued simultaneously with other measures such as banning imported chickens and conducting surveillance on both poultry and humans,"" Huan said in a recent interview at his office.

While the Indonesian public is repeatedly assured that eating even infected chicken is harmless as long as it is properly cooked, Huan said that the avian flu virus ""is very possibly transmitted by eating infected chicken or through close direct contact with the droppings of sick chickens.""

Vietnam at first provided compensation to owners of fowl that were culled, but this was later replaced with offers of soft loans to poultry farmers to enable them to switch to other ventures.

In the wake of the outbreak, Vietnam became vigilant about public health. It stockpiled and updated its antiviral medicines, upgraded hospital equipment, and launched public campaigns and preventive measures. Raising poultry was outlawed in urban areas.

In Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh one cannot see the sight, so familiar to Jakartans, of chickens being transported in coops or loaded up on motorbikes.

Not just health authorities, but schools and community groups in Vietnam take part in massive campaigns on basic personal hygiene and avian flu prevention.

On the outskirts of Hanoi, for example, community members participated enthusiastically in a bird flu education campaign sponsored by the international nonprofit group CARE.

The residents of Viet Doan village, mostly backyard farmers, got lessons on hand-washing, as well as on how to identify avian influenza in humans.

CARE coordinator Helen Cunat said the capacity-building activities were aimed at three different targets -- women, youth and workers.

She said village women played a key role in the project because they were close to children, prepared food for their families and took care of backyard poultry.

-- JP/Emmy Fitri

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