Tran Dinh Thanh Lam – Newsmekong
CAN THO, Vietnam, Jun 30 2008 (IPS) – The bustling city of Can Tho is the capital of southern Vietnam s fertile Mekong Delta and one of the country s two main rice baskets. Good food in abundance makes it an ideal place to raise ducks and chickens, but this also means it is also one of the most high-risk areas in the country for bird flu.
While new outbreaks of the disease threaten the entire country, as harvest season gets underway officials are urging farmers in the Delta to be particularly vigilant.
This is the time of the year when the whole of the Mekong Delta should keep our wits about bird flu, Nguyen Trong, a senior official in Can Tho s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and a member of the local Bird Flu Control and Prevention Office, said in an interview.
Three new outbreaks of bird flu have already been recorded in the Delta since early May.
Vietnam has recorded some significant results in its battle with the deadly bird flu virus. A prototype vaccine for the H5N1 virus is currently being tested and could be ready for local use by next year.
Bui Ba Bong, deputy minister of agriculture and rural development, told the National Steering Committee for Prevention and Control of Bird Flu in Hanoi that despite the good news, bird flu epidemics from poultry remain a threat often due to inadequate preventative measures.
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Since January, the Ministry of Health has been training rapid-response teams throughout Vietnam and provided them with H5N1 virus-proof masks and protective suits.
The human factor remains a key issue, Bong said. A new relapse of bird flu is only possible if authorities neglect their responsibility.
Local media across the country have reported truckloads of poultry passing unchecked at quarantine stations. Dead fowl have also been found thrown carelessly into rice fields and waterways at the first sign of outbreaks.
Some farmers have become so reckless that they refuse to vaccinate their fowl, said Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Department for Preventive Medicine and Environment in the Ministry of Health in Hanoi.
As the harvest seasons gets into full swing, Nga believes it is especially important for authorities in the Mekong Delta to keep a close eye on potential outbreaks of avian influenza. The situation could become worse during harvest season when poultry flocks are released into crop fields for food, he said.
Most farmers throughout the Mekong Delta use natural methods to raise ducks. Large quantities of ducks are released into newly harvested fields to pick at left over grains. Chickens are allowed to roam free in gardens. Farmers also drive large flocks of ducks from province to province to sell at big cities.
The reality is that recent bird flu outbreaks in the Mekong River Delta were found among illegally incubated chicken and ducks that had not been vaccinated [against bird flu], said Trong.
For a long time we forgot about bird flu, and thus were taken by surprise when there were new outbreaks, said Dang Hanh, a farmer in Thot Not commune, Can Tho province. He said he had had to cull nearly 500 ducks and chickens due to recent outbreaks of the disease.
Many other villagers in the Delta reported a similar slackening in regard to preventive measures aimed at preventing bird flu.
Another part of the problem is the lack of attention paid by officials in the past to small-scale farmers. Vaccinating teams do not come to our homes to vaccinate because we have not got many ducks and chickens, said Hanh. If you want your birds to get vaccinated you must carry them to veterinary stations. This is an expensive and time consuming process small farmers like us want to avoid.
In response, Can Tho s Bird Flu Control and Prevention Office has set up inter-provincial quarantine stations to tighten security, particularly in relation to small farms.
Many large-scale poultry farms in the Delta have been spared from the recent spread of avian flu due to a new method of raising birds developed by a Thai company, CP. Chickens are kept in self-contained coops equipped with cooling systems to provide a regulated temperature. These are adjusted according to each type and age of chicken.
The fresh living environment shelters chickens from pathogens such as the H5N1 virus and thus protects them from the epidemic, said Vo Van Thach, owner of the biggest poultry farm in Can Tho province worth 1.2 billion Vietnamese dong (71,000 U.S. dollars).
Each province in the Mekong Delta now has between 100,000 and 450,000 chickens being raised according to this model, and there are plans to expand it.
I also want my poultry to be raised like that, but there will be too much investment for me, Hanh from Thot Not commune said. For the time being, breeding fowls in the traditional way remains the sole option for small farmers, making them the first to be affected by bird flu when there is an outbreak.
(*This story was written for the Imaging Our Mekong Programme coordinated by IPS Asia-Pacific)