The Lang Son People’s Committee has sent an urgent message to district and commune authorities calling for tighter control on poultry smuggling along the Chinese border.

The animal health department has given nine tons of sterilizers to border communities in an attempt to prevent bird flu outbreaks, as the Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, which comes in two weeks, is a time when the trade and consumption of poultry rises sharply, as people hold large family feasts.

Both China and Vietnam have found human cases of avian flu recently, almost a year since the outbreak early last year.

Last week, an eight-year-old girl from north-central Thanh Hoa

Province contracted bird flu, and local health officials have said she is recovering. The girl’s sister died allegedly of unrelated causes on January 2.

Vietnam has reported bird flu outbreaks in Thanh Hoa and Thai Nguyen provinces.

In Hanoi, cooking inspectors have discovered the widespread use of counterfeit quality stamps for poultry to disguise that the chicken was from China, the Vietnam News daily reported Tuesday.

The AFP notes that in 2008, bird flu killed five people in Vietnam, raising the death toll across the country to 52, the second highest after Indonesia with 113 fatalities.

According to the World Health Organization, the number of human cases of bird flu worldwide since 2003 has reached 393, of whom 248 have died.

Bird flu mainly kills animals, but scientists fear it could mutate to spread easily among human beings, potentially sparking a global pandemic.

Source: Agencies (With additional input from AFP)