An animal health worker fumigates a chicken farm (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuchas signed off a national plan on avian influenza prevention and control for2019-2025 with a view to reducing its impact on society and the economy.
The plan seeks to prevent and control avianinfluenza outbreaks and help form disease-free poultry farming zones andchains, thus minimising bird flu’s impact on Vietnam’s public health, foodsafety, and trading activities.
Authorised forces are requested to controloutbreaks well through early detection and a swift dealing with infectedhotbeds to prevent them from spreading. The plan also tasked them withpreventing new and dangerous flu strains from entering or spreading in Vietnam,while vaccinating at least 80 percent of poultry subject to vaccination.
Additionally, disease-free poultry productionzones and chains need to be created in conformity with recommendations of theWorld Organisation of Animal Health, thus ensuring qualified supply fordomestic consumption and export, and reducing the human infection of dangerousflu strains like the H5 or H7 viruses, according to the plan.
In Vietnam, avian influenza virus A/H5N1 inpoultry was reported for the first time in late 2003. At that time, Vietnam wasone of the first countries to declare an epidemic of this virus and sufferedfrom heavy losses when more than 45 million poultry were culled between 2003and 2006. Since then, hundreds of thousands of poultry have been killed eachyear.
From 2004 to 2014, 127 people were infected withA/H5N1, including 64 victims who did not survive, according to the Ministry ofAgriculture and Rural Development. –VNA
VNA
