Foot-and-mouth disease still uncontained, says official

Vietnam is yet to curb the foot and mouth disease among cattle, which has recently recurred in 15 provinces, Hoang Van Nam, deputy head of the Animal Health Department said on Tuesday.

The viral disease is spreading strongly mainly because of the low rate of vaccinations and the lack of proper checks on cattle transported among localities and across borders, Nam said at a meeting on controlling bird flu and foot-and-mouth diseases held in Hanoi. Nam said the department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has established four teams of inspectors to check the epidemic status in the affected localities, mainly in the northern and central regions, and seek solutions to control it. For the moment the National Committee of Bird Flu and Foot and Mouth Disease Control has asked the provinces to quarantine sick cattle instead of killing them, and strengthen vaccination at the same time, according to the meeting. In June the department had said that Vietnam had successfully curbed the spread of the foot-and-mouth disease as well as bird flu and the blue ear pig diseases. Source: VNA

City closes four gruel makers after chemical scandal

Four “nutritious gruel” producers in Ho Chi Minh City were closed temporarily Wednesday as they were found operating in unhygienic conditions.

The city Health Department checked ten producers in Districts 7, 12, Go Vap and Binh Tan, and all were found violating hygiene requirements. The four firms asked to shut down are: Anh Kim, Nang Huong, Vu Hoang Mai and Baby. The inspection was carried out after gruel samples collected by Tuoi Tre from four stalls last Tuesday tested positive for sodium benzoate which is banned from the cereal but was being used to keep the gruel fresh for days in normal condition. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, one gram of sodium benzoate per a kilogram of body weight can kill the person. Nguyen Minh Hung, chief inspector of the city Health Department, said the department had visited 88 gruel household producers in two inspections this year, blacklisting 39 and imposing fines worth a total of VND148 million (US$8,300). Hung said the stalls were fined for using dirty equipment and not having employees examined at medical centers or trained in food safety and hygiene. A total of 27 gruel samples were taken during the second inspection for testing their ingredients. Do Thi Tuyet Lan, head of brand development at Song Kim Joint Stock Co. that provides Cay Thi “nutritious” gruel, was quoted by Tuoi Tre as saying her gruel used a very little amount of sodium benzoat around two months ago as an experiment but had not done it since. Cay Thi gruel is being sold at the Children’s Hospital No.2. Vu Ngoc Tan, director of Vu Hoang Mai company that produces Hoang Mai “nutritious” gruel - also admitted having tried the chemical “to offer a better product to customers” but have stopped that recently. The two producers have never listed the chemical on their package, saying it was only used as a trial. Le Truong Giang, deputy director of HCMC Health Department, said the department inspectors had never checked the ingredients of the rice gruel that is sold to so many children in the city because they (the inspectors) were very busy with other works. Source: Thanh Nien, Tuoi Tre

Big pharma offer H1N1 vaccines at US$6.5-10 a dose

Four pharmaceutical multinationals have offered to sell swine flu vaccines to Vietnam at US$6.5-10 per dose.

Truong Quoc Cuong, Vietnam Drug Administration Director General, said on Wednesday that his office is assessing the applications submitted by Baxter, Sanofi Pasteur, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), and Novatis. The National Institute for Control of Vaccines and Biological Agents, will test the vaccines’ safety. Vietnam wanted to import 500,000 doses of vaccines in addition to 1.2 million sponsored by the World Health Organization, which is expected to arrive next month, Cuong said. Also on Wednesday Nguyen Van Kinh, director general of the Hanoi based National Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases, told a meeting that the number of swine flu patients in critical condition was increasing. It is estimated that 10 percent of the 100-150 H1N1 positive patients admitted to hospitals every day are in critical condition, he said. Since it was first detected here in May, swine flu has claimed 42 lives nationwide with a 23-year-old woman from the southern province of Binh Phuoc the latest victim, the Department of Preventive Health and Environment reported at the meeting. Reported by Lien Chau

Optimism but no end in sight after HIV vaccine trial

Injecting drug users rehabilitation at Tien Lang-Hai Phong. There was cautious optimism in Vietnam last month when a trial HIV vaccine in Thailand appeared to provide some protection against the deadly virus.

Vietnam country director of UNAIDS Eamonn Murphy said he and his Vietnamese colleagues were confident that a fully effective vaccine could be developed in the future. However, he qualified that optimism: “I do not see an end in sight.” Released on September 24, the results of the three year trial found that the chances of catching HIV, a retrovirus that causes AIDS, were 31.2 percent less for those who had taken the vaccine. Among the heterosexual Thai volunteers, 74 people who did not get the vaccine were infected, compared to 51 percent of the vaccinated group infected. “Ultimately we still need to rely on comprehensive HIV prevention,” Murphy said. Improvements The trial was the first time in the virus’s 28 year history that a potential vaccine had shown any efficacy but the call for celebration was only momentary, as the limited effectiveness of the vaccine was a sobering reminder of the need for vigilance. "The numbers are small and the difference may have been due to chance, but this finding is the first positive news in the AIDS vaccine field for a decade," said Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet medical journal in a BBC report. Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), said governments and stakeholders should “prepare today for tomorrow” when a vaccine becomes available. “We must not allow cost to deter people from access to a vaccine.” Sidibé also asked civil society to keep breaking down the social barriers to vaccine uptake. Murphy added that it was too early to talk about introducing a vaccine and many more studies needed to be done. “We have seen improvement in prevention in Vietnam and that’s what we need to focus on.” There were major challenges ahead, Sidibé said in a statement, adding that less than half the people who need treatment have access and a lot has to be done to strengthen HIV health services and make antiviral drugs and a vaccine - when it comes - affordable for everyone. Talking of those challenges, Murphy said there was a long way to go reducing stigma and discrimination in Vietnam before high risk individuals would access a vaccine. He added that governments should provide more funding to find a vaccine. Epidemic figures Murphy said official figures showed that at the end of March 2009, more than 42,000 people “that we are aware of” had died in Vietnam from HIV or AIDS related illnesses. “But this figure is probably too low because many people would not want to identify that their family members have died of AIDS due to the stigma and discrimination associated with this,” he said. “The challenge in Vietnam is that the epidemic is concentrated among groups like injecting drug users, sex workers and their partners and men who have sex with men (MSM) and you can not identify people easily in communities who may be at risk.” UNAIDS figures on the epidemic show that 30,996 people are currently living with AIDS in Vietnam and 243,000 have HIV. Every province is affected with concentrations in high risk groups in the cities. One rehab for drug addicts in HCMC reported that two-thirds of their clients were positive for the virus while an NGO working in the central provinces said one third of injecting drug users there tested positive. Between 2003 and 2006 more than 16,000 Thais from the provinces of Chonburi and Rayong volunteered to take part in the trial, which was run jointly by the Thai government and US military. The researchers tried a combination of two vaccines, ALVAC and AIDSVAX, each of which on their own had previously not worked. Reported by Michael Smith

Southern hub to test milk after children hospitalized

Ho Chi Minh City’s health department will test batches of milk suspected of sending five local children to the hospital over the past week, the local inspectorate said on Tuesday.

However, very little is known about when the inspection, proposed by HCMC’s Children’s Hospital No.2, will start. According to a report made by the hospital to the department and the city’s Preventive Health Center, from October 13-19 it admitted five children with rashes, swollen eyelids, purple lips, tiredness and respiratory difficulties. The children, who come from different districts, were all found to have consumed Vivinal GOS milk by Dutch Lady Vietnam ten minutes before developing the symptoms. Reported by Thanh Tung

Senate May Seek Greater U.S. Carbon Cuts Than House

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- A Senate measure to slow global warming calls on U.S. power plants, factories and refineries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent through 2020, a deeper cut than approved by the House, according to a draft.

The target is part of legislation prepared by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff for release tomorrow, said a person familiar with the process who asked not to be identified before then.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest U.S. energy company, along with American Electric Power Co., the nation’s biggest producer of power from coal and thousands of polluters for the first time would be forced to have permits to release gases blamed for climate change. The draft doesn’t say how many free allowances, worth billions of dollars, would be granted to the companies.

“I’m surprised they didn’t mock out an allocation scheme,” said Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, a Washington energy consulting firm, in an interview. The draft “is really more of a shell than anything else.”

Allocating free permits, which sparked weeks of debate in the House, would function as an economic “stimulus” to companies that receive the most, said Kevin Book, the managing director for energy analysts ClearView Energy Partners LLC.

“As long as we’re still losing jobs, there’s room for this bill to be a stimulus package,” Book said in an interview from Washington. “It’s monetary policy pure and simple: You create a new currency and then you start giving it away.”

Carbon Price Falls

Carbon permits for December in the European Union, operator of the world’s largest greenhouse-gas exchange, fell 3 percent to 13.10 euros on London’s European Climate Exchange.

Both versions of the climate legislation use 2005 as a base year for carbon-emission cuts, with the House measure approved in June mandating a 17 percent reduction in the 15-year period.

The Senate bill would cap emissions and allow trading in permits in a plan similar to the cap-and-trade system approved by the House. In the first year of trading in 2012, greenhouse gases would be capped at 6.6 billion tons, according to the draft. By lowering that figure over time, total emissions would be reduced.

In quarterly auctions starting in 2012, bids must be at $10 per ton of emissions or higher, and no buyer could purchase more than 5 percent of permits offered in any single auction, under the draft measure.

Allowances issued by states that already have established cap-and-trade programs may be exchanged for use in the federal program, under the proposal. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission would regulate the carbon market.

The bill has a 60 percent chance of being approved by the Senate this year, Book said.

E.ON, RWE Rise as Merkel Win May Extend Nuclear Life (Update2)

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- E.ON AG and RWE AG, Germany’s biggest utilities, jumped in Frankfurt trading on speculation Chancellor Angela Merkel’s favored coalition government will scrap a law to phase out nuclear power in the country.

E.ON climbed 4.5 percent to 29.48 euros, while RWE advanced 4.2 percent to 64.80 euros. EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG, the country’s third-largest utility, gained 2.5 percent to 41 euros in Frankfurt trading.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats, her preferred allies, won enough votes to form a government in yesterday’s elections. Merkel may abolish a law that required Germany’s 17 nuclear plants to shut by 2021 after the Social Democrats thwarted earlier attempts to repeal the legislation.

“This is a very positive outcome for E.ON and RWE given that nuclear life extensions should become a reality in Germany,” Peter Crampton and Per Lekander, analysts at UBS AG, said today in a note to investors.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, won almost 34 percent in elections to the lower house of parliament, according to provisional results. The Free Democrats won almost 15 percent.

Support for the Social Democrats, or SPD, Merkel’s previous coalition partner, fell by about 11 percentage points from 2005, the biggest drop for any party in postwar history. The SPD imposed reactor-closure deadlines in 2002 when it was in power.

‘New Coalition’

“The new coalition will almost certainly now seek to extend the lifecycle of the younger atomic plants,” said Claudia Kemfert, an analyst at the Berlin-based DIW economic institute. “The nuclear bogey plainly didn’t help the SPD, for it played no role in this election.”

German businesses had expressed concerned that the cost of keeping lights on would soar if nuclear plants were turned off. Atomic-power stations run by Dusseldorf-based E.ON, RWE of Essen, Vattenfall AB and EnBW generated 23 percent of Germany’s electricity last year. Seven plants, producing 10 percent of Germany’s power, are scheduled to close by 2014.

“We’re proud of the nuclear phase-out and we will fight for its continuity in opposition,” SPD Foreign Minister Frank- Walter Steinmeier said after conceding defeat yesterday.

Solar-power companies including Q-Cells fell on concern the new government may scrap so-called feed- in tariffs used to help new technologies get off the ground.