WHO: No bird flu jump in Vietnam
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A vendor sells chickens at Ba Chieu market, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
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MANILA, Philippines (Reuters) -- Health officials said there was no evidence an outbreak of bird flu in Vietnam was behind the deaths of 12 people who fell ill with influenza.
"We're investigating any possible link. We have no evidence of the link at the moment," Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, told Reuters.
"Of the people who have fallen sick, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission."
He said the results of tests sent to a laboratory in Hong Kong should be available later on Tuesday but that they would first be sent to officials in Vietnam.
The bird flu wiped out nearly one million chickens in Vietnam, officials and the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Transmission of bird flu to humans is rare but the deaths come during growing fears of a new outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) after China confirmed one case of the disease and two suspected cases.
The biggest outbreak of bird flu in humans took place in Hong Kong in 1997 and 1998, killing six people.
WHO sends Scientist to Vietnam
In Manila, a WHO spokesman said the body was sending a scientist to help investigate the confirmed outbreak in Vietnam, but declined to discuss specifics until details were ironed out with the government.
"Our team in Hanoi is talking to the Ministry of Health about clearing a statement. Until that is done, my lips are sealed," said Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the WHO's Western Pacific headquarters in Manila.
"As I speak, at the airport is one of our virologists who is going into Hanoi from Manila."
Hao said Vietnam sent samples of the bird flu virus to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday for DNA analysis and results were expected in a week.
Hanoi declared last week it had been struck by a fast-spreading bird flu that has hit other countries in Asia, Japan the most recent among them. South Korea has culled hundreds of thousands of chickens.
The outbreak came just weeks before Vietnam's biggest holiday, Tet, or the Lunar New Year.
Vietnamese doctors have concluded that 10 children aged between nine months and 12 years, and one woman, are among those who died from the airborne H3N2 influenza virus type A, but Hanoi says the disease is not an epidemic nor a repeat of SARS.
Brudon said she believed the recent human flu outbreak was not widespread and had been contained.
Nguyen Van Loc, deputy director of the Central Paediatric Hospital in Hanoi said it has been treating two more children, one of them improving, though the other needed help breathing.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
