# 990
At it's height, 18 provinces in Vietnam were experiencing outbreaks in early June. Today, officials are reporting considerable success in controlling the virus.
The virus, however, is endemic in waterfowl in that region, and future outbreaks are almost assured.
16:34' 18/07/2007 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – The bird flu epidemic in northern Vietnam has been controlled, said Hoang Van Nam, Vice Head of the Veterinary Agency under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Last week, no new site with the disease was detected in bird-flu hit provinces. Only in Dien Bien province were new places with the disease reported on July 16. Around 6,200 fowls have been culled in five communes of Dien Bien district so far.
At present, Vietnam has five provinces with bird flu: Bac Giang, Thai Binh, Ninh Binh and Dien Bien in the north and Ca Mau in the south.
According to Mr. Nam, the bird-flu virus has widely spread in the environment and the disease can break out again any time in any province if local agencies neglect prevention measures.
Tony Forman, an expert of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said that to effectively prevent the epidemic, Vietnam needed to do the following tasks: All ducks must be vaccinated; poultry breeders must strictly obey rules on vaccination; water birds must be monitored from hatching to transport and sale.
FAO also supports recent tough measures of the Vietnamese government to combat the disease, for example closing down water bird hatching farms that don’t meet standards and culling unvaccinated poultry.
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