20 June 2006
U.S. Aid Agency To Support Alliance To Fight Bird Flu in Vietnam
Alliance project will help train veterinarians in Thai Nguyen Province
Washington -- The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide support for a new public-private alliance to help prevent avian influenza, or bird flu, in Vietnam, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi said in a June 19 press release.
This alliance between agricultural businesses, the Vietnamese government, nongovernmental organizations and U.S. government agencies "highlights the effective and coordinated responses that are preventing an H5N1 pandemic in Vietnam by containing AI [avian influenza] in animals, and limiting its spread among people,” the press release says.
According to the press release, the alliance will be starting a nine-month project to help veterinarians in Thai Nguyen Province improve their diagnosis of the disease, train veterinarians on epidemiological processes and tools, upgrade the government of Vietnam’s animal health information systems, improve the bio-safety measures of small poultry farmers and provide national dissemination of educational materials.
Although the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu has resulted in 93 human infections in Vietnam since 2003 -- including 42 fatal cases -- the virus has yet to develop the capacity for efficient human-to-human transmission, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
However, experts now consider the disease to be endemic in parts of Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and Thailand despite the death or destruction of approximately 150 million birds, the WHO said.
To date, USAID has contributed $158 million to fight the disease. USAID programs focus on five key objectives for improved readiness and response capacity: planning and preparedness, surveillance, outbreak response, communications and stockpiling essential supplies and equipment.
USAID's efforts are one part of the U.S. government's multilevel response to the threat of avian and pandemic influenza.
In a recent meeting in Vienna, Austria, the United States announced it would provide another $28 million to the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, an initiative to assist nations most severely affected by bird flu. This latest pledge pushes the total U.S. contribution to the effort to more than $360 million. (See related article.)
Since the formation of the partnership, the United States has taken a number of steps to help countries contain or combat bird flu, including sending stockpiles of anti-viral medications to Asia in preparation for a human outbreak. (See related article.)
For more information on U.S. policies, see Bird Flu (Avian Influenza).
The full text of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi's press release is available on the embassy's Web site.
More information on U.S. efforts to fight bird flu is also available on USAID’s Web site.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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