Ms Chien, who also heads the National Steering Board for Preventing and Controlling Avian Influenza Pandemic in Humans, requested sub-steering boards at ministries, provinces and cities to reinforce their inspections and surveillance over preventive work for bird flu in poultry, especially in high-risk provinces, in order to prevent it from affecting people.

The Ministry of Culture and Information was required to work with the Vietnam Television and other mass media agencies to promote dissemination of preventive measures to every people.

Meanwhile, all municipal and provincial people's committees were ordered to strictly control the trade and transport of poultry from bird flu-affected areas and at border gates and tighten health quarantine at border checkpoints as well as prepare medical facilities in case avian influenza in humans outbreaks.

Vietnam has contained bird flu in poultry and humans for more than a year. However, on December 6, 2006, the disease broke out and spread quickly in the far-southern provinces of Ca Mau and Bac Lieu, threatening the life of human beings during Spring 2007.

The World Health Organisation noted that H5N1 typed avian influenza has been detected in almost all continents, claiming 157 deaths out of the 261 infected patients in Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

Experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will join their Vietnamese colleagues in inspecting measures to prevent type A flu in humans and poultry in the southern provinces of Ca Mau, Bac Lieu and Hau Giang. 

VOVNews/VNA