Bird flu strikes another province in southern Vietnam

Bird flu has hit Vietnam's southern city of Can Tho, the second in the Mekong Delta area to be struck in just over one week, an official said Friday.

About 100 ducks were found dead on a farm in Can Tho City on Wednesday, forcing authorities to slaughter the remaining 500 ducklings, said Nguyen Ba Thanh, director of the Mekong regional animal health center.

Tests showed they were infected with the H5N1 virus, Thanh said.

The two-month-old ducks, which had not been vaccinated, had been released on the farm to forage for leftover grain, he said.

"We have required all farmers to vaccinate their birds, but many are not doing so," Thanh said. "This makes it difficult to prevent the epidemic from spreading."

Can Tho is next to Vinh Long province, where a bird flu outbreak was reported on March 1.

Three outbreaks have also been reported recently in northern Vietnam, including one on the outskirts of the capital, Hanoi, where nearly 2,000 chicks were killed on Sunday.

Vietnam went a year without reporting an outbreak until bird flu killed or forced the slaughter of about 40,000 birds in eight southern Mekong Delta provinces in January.

Just weeks after authorities declared those outbreaks had been contained, the bird flu resurfaced in Vinh Long.

The H5N1 bird flu virus has killed at least 168 people worldwide, including 42 in Vietnam, since it began ravaging poultry stocks across Asia in late 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

It remains hard for people to catch, but experts worry the virus might mutate into a form that passes easily among humans, potentially igniting a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds.