Mr Khai urged municipal and provincial People’s Committees to co-operate with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) to reorganise poultry breeding activities in order to ensure veterinary hygiene, food safety and environmental sanitation.

The PM also asked MARD to implement a vaccination campaign in 2006 as soon as possible and promote information dissemination activities to raise people’s awareness about the importance of vaccination.

The Ministry of Trade should work closely with provinces and cities to reorganise the poultry and poultry product distribution networks. The Ministry of Health should purchase more medical equipment for bird flu prevention work and map out plans to cope with the epidemic, he said.

So far, the bird flu epidemic and influenza A (H5N1) in humans has been under control nationwide. Since December 2005, there has been no new bird flu outbreaks reported, and no new cases of influenza A (H5N1) have been detected in humans for the past thee months.