# 934
Amid reports that several provinces have gone 21 days or longer without an outbreak, and are declaring themselves `bird flu free', we get another report of a possible human infection.
It should be noted that a number of the provinces now battling outbreaks announced their `bird-flu free' status last January. It remains a transitory status, at best.
New suspected bird flu case in south Vietnam
A man from Bac Lieu province has been hospitalized with symptoms of bird flu after cooking and eating a duck which had died allegedly of bird flu.
The 40-year-old man, who is now in the Tropical Disease Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, has been suffering from severe respiratory problems in the last few days.
He works for a farmer named Tran Van Thong who raises 350 ducklings, some of which died recently.
The province’s animal health authorities said three flocks of ducks in Bac Lieu's Hong Dan district had died in the last few days with bird flu symptoms.
They had been raised in the neighboring Soc Trang province.
The man and the dead ducks are being tested for the H5N1 strain of bird flu.
Vietnam's program of poultry vaccination and other measures was described by international health experts as a model for keeping the H5N1 virus at bay since 2005, but this year the disease has resurfaced nationwide among ducks and chickens.
Outbreaks hit poultry in 16 provinces and two cities this year. Four of them have reported no new outbreaks for over three weeks and are thus considered free of the disease.
The Ministry of Health said test results had confirmed five people had contracted bird flu. Two of them died this month, the country’s first fatalities since late 2005.
Two others, from Thanh Hoa and Vinh Phuc provinces, recovered and were discharged. The fifth, who is from Thai Nguyen province, is under treatment at Hanoi’s National Institute for Clinical Research on Tropical Diseases.
All five either had direct contact with or had eaten dead fowls, Deputy Minister of Health Trinh Quan Huan said Monday.
He confirmed that the H5N1 strain had yet to mutate and the drug Tamiflu was still effective in treating the disease.
The latest deaths raised Vietnam's death toll since 2003 to 44 people out of 98 reported cases.
The World Health Organization has not confirmed the latest cases.
Reported by Tien Trinh – Translated by The Vinh
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