Poultry Farming Reform Urged to Curb Bird Flu

As Vietnam reported 27 new outbreaks of bird flu, public health officials meeting here called for a massive transformation in poultry farming throughout Southeast Asia to stem the epidemic.

The biggest challenge will be to reform the practices of millions of subsistence farmers who share living space with their chickens, ducks and other animals.

Scientists said such conditions created a hothouse for mutations in the flu virus that eventually could enable it to pass easily between people, a precondition for a possible pandemic.

American officials, meanwhile, said they were nearing the start of a large clinical trial of an experimental avian flu vaccine that could help suppress the virus if it spread beyond Southeast Asia.

The “backyard farmers” of Vietnam, which has borne the brunt of the latest outbreak, raise about 90% of the country’s poultry, Cao Duc Phat, the nation’s agriculture minister, said at a news conference during a three-day meeting convened by the World Health Organization.

Among other recommendations, officials urged that chickens and other fowl be kept out of homes, that different species of birds be segregated on farms and in markets to limit spread of the virus, and that domestic fowl be kept penned up to prevent them from mingling with the wild ducks that are thought to be a natural reservoir for the virus, formally known as H5N1.

Changing farming practices and monitoring the spread of the disease, which, according to unofficial figures, has killed 45 people in the last year -- 13 in the last month -- and devastated the poultry industry in parts of Southeast Asia, will require massive infusions of aid from rich nations.

“The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic” that would dwarf SARS in its lethality, scope and economic cost, Shigeru Omi, the WHO’s top Asia-Pacific official, told delegates from more than two dozen nations.

Some steps already have been taken, and they have had a major economic effect. In Ho Chi Minh City, few birds are in evidence because of a recently enacted ban.

Nguyen Thi Le, a fish seller, said the ban was an overreaction that cost many jobs and depressed local businesses.

“Many people, since they cannot sell chicken, had to go back to their home villages,” she said.

Also at the meeting, Japanese researchers pointed out a potential new carrier of the virus: flies. They noted that they captured flies infected with H5N1 last year after an outbreak on a poultry farm in Kyoto.

“Flies can carry the virus just like any other animal,” Dewan Sibartie of the World Organization for Animal Health told Reuters news agency.

Researchers have not determined whether the virus can replicate in flies or whether the insects can transmit it to other species, but Japanese authorities cautioned that such transmission cannot be ruled out and that flies should also be exterminated in future outbreaks.

In the United States, officials at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that the government would soon begin testing a vaccine against avian flu and that the agency had stockpiled 2 million doses of the vaccine as well as substantial quantities of antiviral drugs in preparation for a potential outbreak.

French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur has prepared two batches of 4,000 doses each, in two concentrations, that will soon be shipped to the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases for clinical trials.

The vaccine will be tested in New York, Missouri, Maryland and Texas to ensure its safety and to determine the optimum dose for various groups, including children and the elderly.

Sanofi also has prepared 2 million doses of the vaccine under a potential commercial process to allow it to more easily ratchet up to full production if an emergency arises.

Those doses are being stockpiled for an emergency and to determine how long their potency endures.

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Piller reported from Ho Chi Minh City and Maugh from Los Angeles.