Bird Flu Center

The Vietnamese police has started an investigation into a scam which misused tens of thousands of dollars from government funds meant to prevent bird flu. The director of a Health Department from the Bac Lieu province in southern Vietnam is accused of having inflated the prices of bird flu protective equipment by 1 billion dong (around $60,000) and is ow under investigation. A local newspaper quoted a report by the provincial police to say that 5,100 masks were bought at a price of 50,000 dong, when their actual price was only 15,900 dong, while a protective suit was bought with 68,000 dong instead of 30,800 dong each. The scam took place in early 2004 when avian influenza outbreaks were detected all across the country. Vietnam had, at one point, the world’s highest bird flu death toll, but decisive measures to curb the disease have led to the country not reporting any new outbreaks among poultry this year and no human case of the disease since November 2005.