Vietnamese bird flu vaccines effective
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-01-18 11:09

Pilot vaccination among fowls using "Made-in-Vietnam" vaccines has produced good results, paying the way for mass production in the country, local newspaper Pioneer reported Wednesday.

The first 300 doses of locally-produced vaccines used in more than 1,000 chickens, 200 ducks and 100 white-feathered geese on a trial basis proved effective, the newspaper quoted Vietnam's Veterinary Institute as saying.

If the vaccines are effective on large-scale use, it is of importance to Vietnam, since the country will be more active in vaccination at lower cost, and it, which currently has no bird flu vaccines for white-feathered geese, can vaccinate the fowls for the first time, said the report.

Now, Vietnam has a total of some 7 million white-feathered geese.

Vietnam's Biotechnology Institute is joining hands with a state- owned veterinary medicine maker to produce the vaccines and then use them on a trial basis.

The country, which has vaccinated 245.4 million poultry turns ( each dose for a fowl being considered one turn, two doses for the same fowl regarded as two turns) since August 2005, is continuing the vaccination this year, the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced Tuesday.

After being vaccinated against bird flu viruses, chickens and ducks in Vietnam have gained the anti-disease rates of 86.25 percent and 82.59 percent, respectively.

The department said on January 9 that 21 cities and provinces nationwide, which have been hit by bird flu since early October 2005, have detected no new outbreaks for at least three weeks, meeting criteria to declare their territory free of the disease.

In late November 2005, the department's director Bui Quang Anh told Xinhua that Vietnam had set aside state money of 60 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 3.8 million U.S. dollars) for importing vaccines. By that time, the country had purchased 340 million doses of bird flu vaccines from China, and 6 million doses from the Netherlands and France each.