# 2921
Up until last week, the southern provinces of Vietnam had not seen a human H5N1 infection in several years – so the death of a 3-year-old boy from Dong Thap Province came as a bit of a shock to local officials.
Since then, they’ve hospitalized another child who, though testing negative, is still being treated as an H5N1 suspect.
We’ve seen media reports of one or two other suspect cases in adjacent provinces – including that of a 26-year-old woman who died - as well.
Testing on those is pending.
After becoming the world’s hot spot for avian flu in 2004 and 2005, Vietnam managed to bring their bird flu problem under control in 2006 and for much of 2007.
Slowly over the past 2 years, however, the virus has returned to plague that nation.
Authorities blame the smuggling of birds from neighboring China, and complacency among the locals, for the re-emergence of the virus.
This from Thanh Nien News.
Dong Thap to step up bird flu fight after death of 3-year-old boy
Health officials have called for strengthened precautionary and preventive measures against the spread of bird flu in the Mekong Delta province of Dong Thap.
The call came after the death of a three-year-old boy from the province’s Chau Thanh District on Thursday.
Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Health Ministry’s Preventive Health Department, Friday ordered the district to treat itself as an epidemic hotspot.
Nga said a locality is normally considered to have an epidemic after two locals test positive for the avian influenza virus.
“But now that the virus has spread quickly and poses a high threat, one human case is enough.”
Three-year-old Tran Cong Phuc from the district, admitted to Ho Chi Minh City’s Tropical Diseases Institute on Monday, is the country’s third human victim of bird flu so far this year.
The two other victims, from the northern provinces of Quang Ninh and Ninh Binh, had both slaughtered and eaten sick fowls.
Nga said the 100 percent death ratio so far in avian flu cases was caused mainly by late discovery and treatment.
Another boy of four-year-old from Chau Thanh District, identified as N.T.K.T., was transferred to the Tropical Diseases Institute Thursday with bird flu symptoms but Friday tested negative for the H5N1 virus.
Doctors said T. didn’t eat and touch poultry but his Hoa Tan Commune neighbors Phuc’s Phu Long Commune and he lives 100 meters from an area where three chickens have died for unknown reasons.
T. is still segregated and being treated as a bird flu victim.
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