Vietnam Human Bird Flu Cases Up

Vietnam on Thursday reported four more suspected human cases of the avian flu that has infected poultry in three Asian countries, while China banned imports of chicken and the World Health Organization warned of an increasingly urgent situation.

Vietnam has 14 suspected human cases of avian flu, with 12 deaths. One of the four suspected new cases has died. The WHO’s top expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani, arrived in Hanoi on Thursday.

WHO experts and Vietnamese Health Ministry officials are discussing ways to contain the outbreak.

Bird flu has infected millions of chickens in Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, prompting those nations to order huge slaughters at poultry farms. Officials in Vietnam banned the sale of poultry in Ho Chi Minh City.

A central Taiwan farm slaughtered 20,000 chickens Thursday after some of the birds tested positive for a milder strain of the flu.

“The illness posed a potential but not an immediate threat, and we decided to take the most stringent measure,” said Lin Shih-yu, a Council of Agriculture official.

Beijing halted poultry imports from Vietnam, South Korea and Japan to the mainland after similar measures by its Hong Kong territory and by Cambodia this week. China’s Health Ministry urged authorities to increase surveillance.

“We are moving to a phase of greater urgency,” said Pascale Brudon, the WHO representative in Hanoi. “There was a lot of awareness about the strong need to work quickly. Vietnamese officials are taking the matter very seriously.”

The virus -- highly contagious among chickens -- is believed to spread to humans through contact with infected birds. There have been no reports of the disease being transmitted from one person to another.

The same strain of bird flu killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997, when more than 1 million chickens and ducks were destroyed in the territory.

Officials also have said they believe there is no danger from eating properly cooked meat and eggs from infected birds.

Regional WHO officials have warned, however, that if human-to-human transmission occurs, it could turn avian flu into a deadlier epidemic than SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.