Passport officers at HCMC’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport wear face masks Friday.

Vietnam will brook no relaxed vigilance or any shortage of health equipment meant for fighting influenza A (H1N1) and is preparing for the worst, government officials said Friday.

Health authorities should not just focus on foreign tourists entering the country but keep a close eye on potentially dangerous areas in Vietnam as well, Health Minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu said Friday.

Trieu was speaking at a meeting to discuss measures to stop- the spread of the influenza A.

No cases of the disease have been detected in the thousands of international tourists arriving at Vietnam’s airports in recent days, the Health Ministry confirmed.

During the last 10 days, every foreign tourist and Vietnamese person coming to Vietnam from Mexico has been healthy, the ministry said.

But Minister Trieu said Friday that the influenza A would be even more dangerous than Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), an often fatal flu-like disease which killed five people in Vietnam and nearly 800 worldwide in 2003.

Trieu urged health facilities nationwide to beef up their monitoring of suspected influenza A infection. He said the ministry would punish any clinic responsible for discharging patients infected by the virus.

Director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology Nguyen Tran Hien agreed that schools and companies should be placed under scrutiny since they would be very vulnerable to a possible outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus.

Minister Trieu also instructed central hospitals to ensure a sufficient supply of respirators.

HCMC braces for the worst

Ho Chi Minh City’s Health Department said at a meeting Friday that it had printed 500,000 health-status forms for foreigners arriving at Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

Screening of their body temperatures would continue as normal, the department said.

Speaking at the meeting Friday, city vice chairman Nguyen Thanh Tai said that, in addition to keeping a close watch on the development of the H1N1 flu virus, health authorities should not be complacent about diarrhea or cooking hygiene.

He warned the city would bear the brunt of any pandemic. The city should be preparing for the worst, Tai said.

Source: TN, agencies