PREY VENG, Cambodia - It was a wedding party without guests. The neighbours were afraid to come because they did not want to eat the food, especially chicken, served at the party. The hosts were being discriminated against, all because of an outbreak of bird flu.
This event happened at Prey Takhom village, Prey Takuoch commune, Me Sang district of Prey Veng province in April 2006 after a 12-year-old boy living in the area, Ung Chuon, died of bird flu.
“I’m still sorry about my nephew and am scared of the disease that killed him. At the beginning of the outbreak, nobody spoke to me. Now, some dare to speak to me although they are still afraid of the bird flu,” said Chan Yean, Chuon’s aunt who was living with him.
Yean said that although Chuon used to eat the meat of sick chicken and hunt birds with other boys, he was the only one who died of bird flu. While avian flu broke out in their village, roughly 30 of Yean’s chickens died. Two months later, however, she started raising them again.
Kang Sann, deputy chief of Prey Takhom village, added that the fear factor declined after health officials regularly came to educate them, and no more chicks or ducks died of bird flu.
But Tith Ngoy, who lives in Koh Chamkar village, Beung Sala Khang Tbong commune in Kampong Trach district of Kampot, still cannot go back to raising chickens or farming, because two of his children died. One of them, 25-year-old Tith Sakhan, died of H5N1 and her younger brother, Tith Cheang, died six days before she was suspected of having the same virus.
There was no declaration from experts that Tith Cheang had been infected with the H5N1 virus, but Ngoy claims that both of his children had the same symptoms. Sakhan and Cheang died in late January 2005.
“Bird flu is a new disease,” Ngoy said matter of factly. “My children ate sick chickens and we were not aware of that. Now I have lost them, and I have big debts to pay. I would like to request the government to help me.”
Like Nghoy, Son Khemary also lost her 20-year-old son, Chanbopha, to the H5N1 virus. But she did not want any compensation from the government, even after nearly 100 of her ducks died of bird flu. Between her and her husband, who is a fisherman who does a bit of rice farming, they have not been able to make ends meet and support their eight children. Chanbopha got sick after attending a wedding party in the village where he ate sick birds, and died in a hospital in Vietnam, Khemary added. She said the villagers stopped eating sick ducks and chickens after listening to village elders and health officials, who also told them to bury poultry that die after getting ill.
Orng Kao, chief of Bay Tea village where Khemary lives, said that there are 132 families in the village, most of them with small chicken and duck farms.
So Vitou, chief of the Animal Health and Production Office at Kampot, recognised that residents are now more aware of the disease and have gone back to raising ducks in small-scale farming.
“The trading and importing of ducks and chickens from neighbouring countries have been prohibited, unless they have confirmation letters about the birds’ health from officials,” Vitou said. “As I have observed, the economic impact on people is not serious, despite four deaths in the province. During the outbreak, roughly 10,000 birds were slaughtered.”
Heng Chantha, director of the infection prevention office at Kampot, said that although around 300 people in the two districts were tested for the H5N1 virus, the results did not show that they were infected with it. Local health officials are trained regularly to strengthen their capacity to deal with new outbreaks, he said.
Although people have died from bird flu, Sokea, who lives in Tang Krang village, Chea Lea commune, Ba Theay district of Kampong Cham, where the last outbreak occurred, still does not believe that bird flu can kill people. She pointed out that in previous years, no one had gotten sick or died from eating sick or dead poultry.
About 700 of her ducks died during the outbreak. After she informed the authorities about them, health officials came to slaughter the rest of her 100 ducks without paying her compensation. “I demand money from officials who culled my ducks because I fed them, aiming to get some money to pay my debts,” an angry Sokea said. “Next time, if they come to destroy my farm again, I'll grab the knife and chop them up.”
Kao Phal, director of the Production and Animal Health department of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, said that the government did not have any policy to compensate those whose poultry were culled. However, it did provide them with technical know-how on feeding and preventing chickens and ducks from getting bird flu, he added.
In Cambodia, he said, there are some 16 million ducks and chickens in more than 100 poultry farms, mostly in Kandal, Takeo, Phnom Penh and Kampong Speu provinces. Since the avian flu outbreak occurred in mid-2004, 26,844 ducks and chickens were slaughtered from 21 poultry farms across the country.
Phal added that outbreaks have occurred in four places in Takeo, two in Siem Reap, two in Phnom Penh, five in Kandal, four in Kampong Cham, two in Kampot, one in Kampong Speu and one in Prey Veng province.
“So far, we have not conducted a survey about the economic impact caused by bird flu,” Phal said, “but I recognised that during the outbreak, there is no market (for poultry products) and they (farmers) cannot export.”
Now that there is no new outbreak, people have started to set up small-scale poultry operations. With a new education campaign involving ministries and institutions as well as monks at the end of 2006, about 10,000 local veterinarians have been trained on handling bird flu.
Ly Sovann, head of surveillance and infection prevention at Cambodia’s Ministry of Health, said that as of late 2006, more than 600 people have been tested for H5N1 virus. But only six were found to have been infected with and died of the disease -- four in Kampot, one in Prey Veng, one in Kampong Speu. The first human H5N1 case was reported in Phnom Penh in 2005.
“Even if we cannot find other people with signs of bird flu, education to prevent the outbreak is still going on with related ministries,” Sovann said. “At the moment, three more provinces, Kampong Cham, Kampot and Stung Treng, are training staff and have been equipped with laboratories for testing.”
Megge Miller, epidemiologist with the Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response section of World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cambodia, said the kingdom is among the poorest countries affected by bird flu, where people depend on small income from raising poultry. The government’s failure to provide them compensation for culling added to their economic burdens.
“Compensation is one matter, but education is an important thing that we need to follow. We also need to observe the situation all the time,” Miller said.
WHO has spent 1.5 million U.S. dollars on technical assistance to the health ministry to raise awareness about bird flu, Miller added. It is also training local health officials to identify the bird flu symptoms among people. “But it is not easy to call all individuals in for testing,” Miller remarked. “Fever and cough are common illness.”
OVER IN VIETNAM
Thuy Mien, owner of a duck farm at Ha Tien town in Kien Giang province of Vietnam, said the 30 percent compensation package from the government could not help her prevent the farm from going bankrupt. The only way her farm could keep afloat was with the use of money she had loaned from both the bank, and from her relatives.
Dida Connor, WHO communication officer in Hanoi, said that there were 93 confirmed human cases of H5N1 in Vietnam, including 42 deaths, as of late November 2005. The first case was reported in Vietnam in 2003.
Connor said that even when there is no outbreak, the government continues to intensify prevention and control efforts. Public warnings have been issued via mass media to increase awareness.
“Virus outbreaks in poultry and humans continue to be reported in neighbouring countries,” she said. “Despite the current positive trend, the threat remains very serious.”
A high-ranking official at the Ministry of Agriculture said that at the peak of the avian flu outbreak in Vietnam in 2004, 24 percent of communes and 60 percent of towns were affected. (There are 10,934 communes, 58 towns and 584 districts in the country.) In March 2004, about 17 percent of the poultry population - about 45 million birds - had either died or been culled.
He said that a national poultry vaccination programme, involving the immunisation of 170 million chickens and 79 million ducks, was undertaken from December 2005 to January 2006 in Vietnam.
The same official estimated that the outbreak caused reduction of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2004, affecting some 8 million of Vietnam’s 11 million households thought to be engaged in poultry production.
Jeffery Gilbert, chief technical advisor for the avian influenza programme of FAO Vietnam, said that the government and the United Nations are working together on a number of public awareness campaigns. “Our concern is that the people’s interest in bird flu is decreasing and that they believe that the threat has passed,” Gilbert said in an interview. “We need to continue to be on guard and raise public awareness on the continuing threat of bird flu.”
Gilbert said a new campaign launched jointly by the government, U.N. agencies including FAO, as well as the women’s union, aims to provide new impetus to prevent avian and human influenza outbreaks. This campaign’s coverage will also expand from urban to rural areas, and include the poultry industry and farmers.