World mobilizes against bird flu

HANOI, Vietnam - International health experts tried to trace the lines of transmission of a bird flu that has killed five people and millions of chickens across Asia, as China on Tuesday shut trade ports along its border with hard-hit Vietnam.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that because of "mounting concern" over the five deaths, it is working on a new vaccine to protect people from the bird flu. A prototype could be ready for vaccine manufacturers in about a month.

The WHO said laboratories in its network have begun using newer genetic techniques to develop a human vaccine against the A(H5N1) strain of the avian influenza virus. The Geneva-based agency said it was taking steps to prepare the vaccine as a precautionary measure in case the virus mutates and starts spreading from person to person.

High-security laboratories in Hong Kong and Japan have isolated the virus from two of the five confirmed human deaths attributed to avian influenza in Vietnam. Using reverse genetics, the scientists aim to develop a seed virus in about four weeks that manufacturers could use to produce a human vaccine.

The WHO also oversaw production of a similar vaccine during last February's bird flu scare, which caused two cases and one death in Hong Kong.

Also on Tuesday, six scientists from Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday joined the WHO in Vietnam, which is leading the inquiry into how the bird flu has jumped from poultry to people.

A total of 14 scientists, with expertise in epidemiology, disease surveillance and livestock and animal husbandry, will be involved in investigations, WHO spokesman Bob Dietz said in Hanoi.

The bird flu has resulted in what the WHO described as "historically unprecedented epidemics" throughout the poultry industry in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan. It is the first such epidemic in Japan since 1925 and the first ever documented in Vietnam and South Korea.

Vietnam, however, is the only country with confirmed cases of the bird flu in people; five have died.

The scientists will try to determine exactly how the flu is being transmitted from bird to human. Among the puzzles they will need to solve is why the bulk of the bird infections have occurred in southern Vietnam, while all the human victims have been from the northern region around Hanoi.

Health officials believe patients contracted the disease through contact with the sick birds, but have not confirmed that.

So far, there has been no evidence of person-to-person transmission. But health officials have warned that if the avian virus mutates to allow human transmission, it could make the disease a bigger health crisis than SARS, which killed nearly 800 people worldwide last year.

Vietnam has one of the weakest health care systems in Asia and would be hard-pressed to meet such a challenge, WHO officials said.

In an effort to curb the outbreak, Vietnam says, it has killed 2-million chickens in 15 provinces stretching from Ho Chi Minh City in the south to Hanoi in the north.

The spread of bird flu, along with the re-emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome - with three recent cases confirmed in China - has put Asia on a regionwide health alert.

In a bid to monitor any potential outbreaks, a vigilant China issued an emergency notice requiring "veterinary and quarantine units at the grass-roots level" to make daily reports to higher departments.

If the disease is found, all poultry within 2 miles of the site will have to be slaughtered and all poultry within 3 miles will have to be vaccinated immediately, it said.

The southern Chinese province of Yunnan has closed all of the 40 trade ports along its 740-mile border with Vietnam and set up quarantine checkpoints to keep out the avian disease, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

China's central government has already banned chicken imports from Vietnam as well as Japan and South Korea.

Millions of chickens have died from bird flu in Thailand, a major chicken exporter, according to some farmers. But government officials attribute the deaths to fowl cholera and infectious bronchitis.

Though Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra announced that a man was sick with symptoms similar to bird flu, he was quick to play down the threat, saying, "So far there is no bird flu found in Thailand."

Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said preliminary tests of the sick man in Nakhon Sawan province, 130 miles north of Bangkok, showed he has a bacterial lung infection. Further examinations were being done.

- Information from the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.

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