Nearly VND 7,000 billion for emergency action plan

'The risk and likelihood of a pandemic is very high. This is completely grounded. ' Standing Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung repeated this at the conference to thoroughly implement emergency action plans to prevent bird flu and human pandemic influenza.

Vaccine for bird flu prevention in Nhon Hoa Loc commune, Tan Thanh district (Long An) on October 10

The urgency and decisiveness manifested itself in the conference lasting only 90 minutes yesterday morning with the full presence of representatives of ministries, branches and localities.

Very high risk

According to the Deputy Prime Minister, through three outbreaks of bird flu (beginning in late 2003, each time four months apart), type A influenza with H5N1 subtype has appeared in Vietnam; There have been 90 cases of disease and especially 40 deaths, in 31 provinces and cities.

Compared to other countries in the region and some countries around the world appear at the same time (or appear before Vietnam), the number of people infected and the death rate in Vietnam is quite high. As Thailand has 12/17 infected people died; Indonesia (6/20); The Netherlands in 2003 only had 1/83 people who died.

If history goes back, this is also the time when almost a century of bird flu epidemic occurred in Spain (1918-1919), then spread to many other countries that claimed the lives of 20-40 million people. .

Three stages of emergency planning

The emergency action plan has three phases (corresponding to the WHO 'six' phases), each with options for each specific situation.

Vietnam is in the 3rd phase, belonging to the first phase, that is, there are people infected but there is no human-to-human transmission. Phase 2 will correspond to phases 4 and 5.

That is, there have been diseases spreading from person to person in a narrow range, not yet able to spread into a pandemic.

In phase 6, stage 3 when pandemic occurs, virus can spread on a large scale. At each stage, the emergency action plan outlines the goals and measures to respond to the epidemic.

If translated into phase 2, the National Steering Committee for Pandemic Influenza will issue a state of emergency.

It is strictly forbidden to sell all livestock and poultry in the epidemic areas, destroying all poultry flocks. Establish quarantine latches around the epidemic.

Isolate the entire translated area for 21 days. The worst case (stage 3), assuming a pandemic occurs, hundreds to thousands of people get sick then at the same time with response measures like phase 2, the Government will declare a state of emergency in nationwide.

Measures to respond to these phases are carried out according to the motto of 'three in place': forces, materials and on-site processing.

And now if the pandemic happens, Vietnam will have about 16 million people infected (20% of the population), the number of people dying from the disease will be about 1.6 million people. Not to mention the strong impacts on all aspects of economy, society, people's health .

Financial focus

In the face of pandemic risk, the Prime Minister approved an urgent action plan and instructed ministries, branches and localities to focus on implementing this urgent action plan.

According to Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the government's highest goal is to "do everything, make every effort, mobilize the whole political system to insist on not having a pandemic. If a pandemic still occurs, it must be well prepared and well done to minimize the spread of epidemic, minimizing human losses'.

According to Deputy Minister of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, deputy head of the National Steering Committee for prevention and control of Bui Ba Bong bird flu, the budget for implementing the emergency action plan will reach nearly VND 7,000 billion.

This is a concentrated amount for procurement of equipment, construction of important items, such as buying 10,000 chemical sprayers, storage of chemicals, shopping for each commune, ward 5,000 sets of clothes protected (total of about 20 million sets), vaccination vaccines.

The Ministry of Health also said that it is expected to need VND 14,000 billion to invest in upgrading medical facilities, facilities and chemicals for the influenza pandemic prevention plan (2006-2010 period).

The Prime Minister has agreed to allow the Ministry of Health to buy enough preventive medicine and 1,000 ventilators and quickly invest in level 3 biosafety laboratories for emergency epidemic prevention.

To proactively deal with pandemics, Mr. Bui Ba Bong said that the emergency action plan also proposes the organization of human epidemic prevention exercises in three levels of translation corresponding to stages 1, 2 and 3, with a total rehearsal cost of VND 20 billion.

DUC BINH

A very high risk of a human pandemic influenza could occur if localities were not alert and focused on preventing recurrence. Deputy Minister of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development Bui Ba Bong talked about measures to prevent and fight against influenza in progress .

* Between actual goals and results, sometimes there are gaps, does this phenomenon of avian influenza prevention and control occur?

- No, our avian influenza prevention and control activities have been drastic and effective over time. The fact also shows that bird flu in Vietnam has decreased sharply compared to the previous two years, reducing to 80-90%.

If we continue to organize well the recurrence of influenza pandemic activity as in the past, I believe that there will be no major flu outbreaks in the country.

The vaccination program for poultry with more than 150 million chickens being deployed in Vietnam has also been highly advised and appreciated by dozens of leading epidemiologists. No country has organized vaccination for large-scale vaccines, in small-scale breeding conditions like Vietnam today.

Our biggest difficulty now is to import vaccines from China, so the arising of inadequacies, delays . is unavoidable.

Although it is about a week late, many localities have provided enough vaccines and poultry vaccination plans will be completed by the end of November 2005 as the program.

* The number of poultry regularly increases, not to mention that the 'illegal' flock of ducks is also quite large, are these groups vaccinated?

- From now to the beginning of 2007, the State will support funds for vaccination for poultry and will be carried out continuously. After this time, poultry farmers have to pay for vaccination.

Particularly for ducks, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has previously instructed localities to prohibit breeding until February 2006. In fact, the number of ducks still arises due to illegal farming status of some individual households.

However, our policy is to organize vaccination for all poultry, including legal or illegal, to limit the potential source of infection.

However, I also emphasized that we do not encourage households to raise poultry illegally, localities must actively control this activity.

In addition to vaccination, vaccination prevention activities will continue to focus on two important jobs, which are national disinfection organizations in two consecutive months (starting on the 15th - 10), the second is the early detection and immediate removal of new outbreaks.

Experience in the last two years of the epidemic shows that the localities that organized the disinfection well, even where the pandemic occurred, the phenomenon of epidemic spread on poultry is also very limited.

* Thank you Sir.

HAI DANG made