Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
We're living on borrowed time.
Klaus Stohr (WHO)
313
The Year of the Rooster, 2005, began with several more flu deaths in Vietnam. In two cases, the virus was
contracted from eating raw duck blood pudding, a local delicacy savoured on ceremonial occasions. Tests
showed that GenZ was now endemic amongst the hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese that roam Viet-
namese farmyards that are in constant contact with chickens, pigs, and children. Because duck influenza is
generally asymptomatic, there was no obvious way—apart from time-consuming and expensive blood test-
ing—to distinguish infected from non-infected birds. Vietnam's desperate efforts at containment through
the selective slaughter of poultry were undermined by the emergence of this “silent reservoir.” Disoriented
local authorities, as a result, grasped at questionable expedients. As the Vietnamese New Year approached,
riot police set up checkpoints around Ho Chi Minh City to interdict the expected influx of infected poultry
during Tet celebrations.
314
Municipal officials on 1 February also ordered the slaughter of all ducks in the
city: a move that Dutch influenza expert Jan de Jong denounced as “really nonsense.” He told an American
reporter that the only way to stop the outbreak in Vietnam was “a near-total culling of the region's poultry
and curtailment of poultry farming for several years.”
315
Hanoi retorted with justice that it needed more international aid to bolster its surveillance network and
to compensate peasants whose flocks were being culled. The country was too poor to afford the destruc-
tion of a vital part of its subsistence economy without compensation from the richer nations for whom it
was expected to provide an epidemic firewall. Foreign influenza experts working in Vietnam echoed Agri-
culture Minister Cao Duc Phat's appeal on 2 February for truly serious international assistance. Writing in
the
New York Times,
Anton Rychener (the outspoken FAO representative in Vietnam), and Hans Troedsson
(his WHO counterpart), pointed out that if the H5N1 outbreak had occurred in a poorer European country,
there would have been a vast outpouring of money and medicine. “In the case of Asia, the international
community has failed to come forward with enough money to finance desperately needed public health and
veterinary measures and research on vaccines.”
316
In an earlier interview with
Nature,
Dr. Jeremy Farar of
Oxford University's clinical research unit in Ho Chi Minh City had lashed out at the dilettantish behavior
of Western scientists: “When there's a problem, everyone flies in, creates a certain amount of havoc, flies
out, and leaves nothing behind to change the situation.” (He specifically exempted St. Jude's researchers
and the crack Hong Kong team from his criticism.)
317
Incredibly, part of the shortfall of aid was most likely
due to lobbying by Western poultry interests. With the Bush administration obviously in mind,
Nature
had
editorialized in mid-January against the “mindset of protectionism” that obstructed veterinary aid to Viet-
nam. “Rich governments are disinclined to build up poor countries' ability to keep track of animal viruses,
seeing this as economic assistance rather than humanitarian aid.”
318
Although the tsunami catastrophe in the Indian Ocean was the principal agenda item at the WHO ex-
ecutive board meeting on 25 January, the deteriorating flu situation in Vietnam was also on many minds.
The Secretariat had circulated a briefing on pandemic preparedness that warned that the “present situation
may resemble that leading to the 1918 pandemic.” The report emphasized that “changes in the ecology of
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