Another Vietnamese has fallen victim of the bird flu, raising the country's death toll to 39. This time Vietnam has finally decided to start vaccinating poultry nationwide against bird flu in August.
An initial 20 million doses of vaccines will be imported from the Netherlands and China.


Lao Dong newspaper is quoting medical staff at Bach Mai hospital, which says that a 73-year-old Hanoi resident was admitted on June 23rd but died yesterday. The man was one of the four patients infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Other countries have been affected by the bird flu, especially Thailand and Cambodia, where another 16 victims are already reported.




Bird flu first struck poultry farms across Vietnam in late 2003, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 45 million birds.

It was suspected that the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus had changed because of recent clusters of human cases with patients showing no symptoms of illness. However, a team of virologists and epidemiologists from Hong Kong, Japan, Britain and the United States announced that the virus didn't suffer any changes from the original formula.