Avian Flu Imperils Livelihoods in Vietnam

The nervous woman, about 55 years old, paced alongside the lonely dirt road, on the lookout for the white truck that hunts down chickens and hauls them off for slaughter.

For 30 years, she has raised chickens here, 30 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, but now she is deemed a criminal. An outbreak of deadly avian influenza has prompted Vietnamese authorities to slaughter millions of chickens and ban the sale of poultry, but that hasn’t stopped her from selling birds.

She and her flock of 100 chickens had been lucky, dodging the frequent raids in this low-income, rural town dotted with chicken farms and rice fields where the first outbreaks of avian flu occurred.

“I am very sad and worried,” said the woman, who refused to give her name for fear that she would be fined or arrested. “This is all I know how to do to survive, and it is being taken away from me. How am I going to raise my children? How am I going to live?”

The bird flu, which has struck 10 countries and territories in Asia, has hit Vietnam the hardest. Thirteen people in Vietnam and five in nearby Thailand have died after apparently contracting the disease from chickens. Authorities worry that if the disease takes hold in the human population and spreads from person to person, it can cause a worldwide epidemic.

There are no known cases of human-to-human transmission. The World Health Organization had been conducting tests to determine whether two Vietnamese sisters who died in Thai Binh province last week might have contracted the disease from their brother.

But it said Friday on its website that tests showed that the sisters were killed by virus of avian origin that contained no human influenza genes.

Following the recommendation of the World Health Organization and other experts, Vietnam has ordered the slaughter of millions of chickens in an attempt to contain the disease.

The government’s decision is expected to wipe out the jobs of thousands of vendors and merchants employed in Vietnam’s poultry industry. So far, the disease has struck half the country’s 64 provinces. An estimated 3.7 million chickens have been buried alive or incinerated as officials raid poultry farms.

At the usually bustling Tran Chanh Chieu market in Ho Chi Minh City, where fresh flocks once would arrive daily, vendors lay in hammocks, wondering when the next shipment would come. Among them was Phuoc Le, who would usually sell up to 200 chickens a day. He was selling lottery tickets instead.

“My livelihood is gone,” said Le, jobless for nearly a month because of the virus. “Everyone is afraid to eat chicken and no one is buying it, so I have to come up with another source of income.”

The market was once a hub where shoppers could choose from rows of live birds. Last week, the aisles were quiet, filled with empty wire cages and wandering staff, now unemployed.

“We’re trying to figure out what to do with our lives,” said Thien Tran, 33. “I’ve taken care of chickens for 15 years and nothing has happened to me, so I’m not afraid of the flu -- I’m afraid I’ll be on the streets.”

A distraught Anh Tran, 46, lost 16 chickens during an afternoon raid at the market. When she spotted the white truck, she bundled her chickens into a rice sack and hid them under a tree across the street.

But health officials, wearing face masks and armed with decontaminant spray, followed the sound of their cackles. They tossed the chickens into a cage and took them to a field to be slaughtered.

“My chickens were strong and healthy. I don’t know why they wanted to take them away from me,” Tran said shortly after the raid. “I ate chicken for Lunar New Year, and there’s nothing wrong with me.”