健康英语新闻:Vietnam, UN review fight against highly pathogenic avian influenza

HANOI, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized a workshop here on Friday to finalize implementations in Phase 2 of the UN-Vietnam Joint Program to fight against Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) during 2007-2011.

The workshop is not only to review the achievements but also from that, Vietnam hopes to receive more supports from the UN agencies, said Bui Ba Bong, Vietnamese vice minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

According to the report, so far, Vietnam's project on prevention of HPAI has basically achieved the targets in terms of making plans, policies and strategies for the veterinary sector, assessing the impacts of destruction of poultry to the environment, controlling pandemic, and supporting vaccine inoculation, quarantine and control of the infected animals, said Bong.

Vietnam showed great efforts in responding and preventing H5N1 pandemic during its occurrence in 2005-2006, evaluated UN agencies.

In Phase 2, Vietnam achieved positive results in controlling and reducing the impacts of the pandemic, and promoting bio- security in livestock breeding. Therefore, UN pledged to continue assisting Vietnam in the future.

The UN-Vietnam joint program to fight HPAI was designed to meet the needs of emergency assistance to control the avian and human influenza.

Total fund of the program is 25 million U.S. dollars, of which over 18 million U.S. dollars was approved for Phase 2.