Best foot forward

A Chinese artist is able to support himself with brushes and scrolls. But love has proved more elusive.

Street artist Xi Fu attracts a crowd while writing calligraphy with his feet in Beijing Xi Fu's name in English means Seeking Happiness and the Chinese street artist, who has almost no use of his hands, remains firmly on that path despite his handicap. Xi, 30, was dropped by a nurse shortly after his birth, causing the disability which has given him trouble walking as well as the problems with his hands. He went to school for three years before being forced to drop out because the school found it too time-consuming to teach him, even though he had become as adept at using his toes and feet as others using their fingers and hands. When he was 18, his mother took him to an arts center and asked about painting lessons for her son. Seeing that Xi was smart and confident as well as skilled, the teacher was sure he could help and explained to Xi that many people made a living from art. After three years of one-on-one training, the teacher declared it was time for the then 21-year-old "foot artist" to hit the streets and earn a living. For the past nine years Xi has roamed the Chinese capital, writing calligraphy and painting flowers with his feet. In a good month he can earn 3,000 yuan (US$430), more than many Beijing office workers, selling his works for 100-200 yuan ($14-28) each. While Xi said he has a passion for his work, he says it is not an easy life. Often he sets up his paint brushes and scrolls in one of the city's many pedestrian underpasses, though he must dodge police who would force him to move. He often also comes across insensitive and rude people but said he accepts his fate. "It doesn't matter if you are normal or disabled, everyone has his or her bad moments." In his more private moments, he admits, there is inner pain as he believes his disability makes it difficult for him to find a wife or girlfriend. But Xi remains cheerful, pragmatically accepting his lot in life and confessing to feeling uncomfortable if he thinks people are pitying him. "I'd like to find a girlfriend but who wants a boyfriend who is disabled?" he said. He believes that finding a partner who is also disabled could become problematic when they are older and unable to help one another. As he lives with his parents, who own their home in a rural suburb south of Beijing, the money he earns enables him to have fun and socialize with his performance-artist friends. He particularly likes relaxing drinking beer - an act he delicately performs with his feet, pouring beer from a bottle held in one foot into a glass held in the other. He also loves music and can sometimes be found at local bars in the heart of Beijing's ancient Drum and Bell Tower neighborhood, drinking or dancing to live music by Chinese folk and rock bands. Xi said he overcomes his disability by living in the present, aware that he can work to earn a living and thankful he has good friends. When asked what he will do when one day he can no longer earn a living, he replied defiantly: "I don't want to think about that so much now. I'm not afraid and only think about being happy." Source: AFP

Bird flu found in poultry in northern Vietnam

Bird flu has resurfaced in poultry in northern Thai Nguyen Province after many months without any cases in the nation, the Tuoi Tre daily quoted a report from the Vietnam News Agency on Saturday.

Animal health officials confirmed on Saturday that the H5N1 virus had killed several birds among a flock of more than 100 ducks in Thai Nguyen Town, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Hanoi. Earlier this year in late January, officials had detected the virus in dead chickens at a farm in the same town and nearly 4,200 chickens had been slaughtered. According to Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan last week, there was a very high risk of bird flu returning during the winter and spring in northern Vietnam. The H5N1 strain seems to thrive best in low temperatures. The Tet Lunar New Year festival late next month is also considered a high-risk time for the spread of bird flu because the slaughter, trade and consumption of poultry, and smuggling of birds from neighboring China, rises sharply. The Health Ministry last week issued a nationwide bird flu alert, urging cities and provinces to step up detection and epidemic control measures. Five Vietnamese have died of bird flu so far this year out of six reported H5N1 infections and all were found in northern Vietnam during the first quarter of the year. No new human deaths have been reported since March. The Southeast Asian nation has recorded 106 infections, the second highest number of cases among the 15 countries with known human cases, after Indonesia. Since 2003, the World Health Organization has confirmed 391 human cases of bird flu, of which 247 people have died. In Vietnam, 52 people have died, the second highest toll after Indonesia, where the virus has killed 113 people. Bird flu mainly kills animals, but scientists fear it could mutate to jump easily from human to human, sparking a global pandemic. Source: AFP, Reuters

Mekong children to receive free facial surgery

More than 300 children with cleft lip and palate deformities in the Mekong Delta region will receive free surgery from next week thanks to a campaign launched Friday in Ho Chi Minh City.

Operation Smile Vietnam (OSV), National Hospital of OdontoStomatology in HCMC, and the Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel), will implement the project in 12 regional localities from December 15 to January 2. Volunteer doctors from the HCMC hospital will perform the surgeries on patients at hospitals in Tien Giang, Kien Giang and Vinh Long provinces. Viettel donated VND1.4 billion (US$82,000), covering all expenses for the campaign including all patient fees. More than 500 patients have already registered for the surgery, which normally takes 45-60 minutes and costs $150 for medicines, hospital fees, meals and transportation during the operation, according to OSV. Each year, about 3,000 infants are born in Vietnam with cleft clip and/or cleft palate, OSV said. Established in 1989, the nongovernmental OSV, part of the US-based Operation Smile Inc., has helped more than 12,000 Vietnamese children and young adults with cleft clip and palate deformities through local and international surgical missions. Reported by Van Khoa

Doctors perform heart surgery on premature baby

Doctors at the Hanoi-based Vietnam National Hospital of Pediatrics have managed to perform an endoscopic surgery for a heart defect in a premature baby, Director Nguyen Thanh Liem said on Friday.

Luu Thanh H., who was born two weeks ago with a weight of 1.2 kilograms, suffered from a critical respiratory failure. The baby’s ductus arteriosus – the shunt connecting the pulmonary artery to the aortic arch and allowing most of the blood from the right ventricle to bypass the fetus' fluid-filled lungs – failed to close, according to doctors. He was then diagnosed as having patent ductus arteriosus, a congenital heart defect. H. is the smallest baby that has ever been diagnosed with the defect in Vietnam, a local newswire recently quoted Liem as saying. Liem told Nguoi Lao Dong Newspaper the defect is rather common among babies, accounting for 18 to 20 percent of congenital heart defects. If left uncorrected, patent ductus arteriosus may lead to congestive heart failure in older children and adults. H. is being closely monitored by the doctors, Liem said. Source: TN

Vietnam produces 4 percent of world’s IVM babies

Vietnamese In Vitro Maturation (IVM) babies account for 4 percent of the 1,200 IVM babies internationally, a Ho Chi Minh City medical official said Sunday.

Following the success of the Vietnamese IVM program, doctors were invited to report at an all-European IVM infertility treatment meeting in Italy on December 12-13. According to HCMC Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Association General Secretary Dr. Ho Manh Tuong Sunday, the IVM method almost halves the cost of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and has a shorter time of 10 days instead of four weeks. He added that IVM was introduced in Vietnam last year. Reported by Thanh Tung

Thousands of children hospitalized during Hanoi, HCMC cold snaps

Children being admitted to the Children Hospital No. 2 in Ho Chi Minh City. Cold weather is being blamed for thousands of children with diarrhea in Hanoi as well as the spread of colds and flu to thousands more in Ho Chi Minh City during the past few weeks.

Tuesday afternoon, parents were queuing with sick children at Central Children Hospital in Hanoi. The hospital said they were overloaded by three times their patient capacity in recent days. “My baby has been vomiting and suffering with diarrhea for two days,” said a mother of a one-year-old child from Dong Da District at the hospital Tuesday. Doctor Can Phu Nhuan, dean of the Central Children Hospital’s examination department said between 1,300 and 1,500 children had been brought to the hospital for examinations everyday, recently adding that diarrhea patients accounted for 30 percent of admissions. He said diarrhea patients may not have high temperatures if it is caused by a virus. “Diarrhea may cause severe dehydration which is very dangerous,” he said. “Patients should be taken to the hospital right away when showing symptoms like thirst, dry lips and crying without tears.” The Saint Paul Hospital in Hanoi has examined around 600 children everyday recently, a third of them with diarrhea. Doctor Hoang Minh Thu of the Saint Paul Hospital said the children had contracted Rotavirus, which is more common in the cold season. Doctors also advised parents to rehydrate their sick children before taking them to hospital, adding that improper treatment at home could worsen the potentially fatal disease. “Parents should offer oral rehydration therapy as first aid before taking them to hospital,” doctor Nhuan advised, adding to administer only small sips to avoid nausea. He also called for good parental hygiene practices to prevent the spread of the virus to more children. “Sometimes, adults contract the virus but display no symptoms,” he said adding that they could still transmit it to their children. In Ho Chi Minh City the recent dry cold weather has led to a lot of children with respiratory problems. The highest risk of children catching respiratory disease and diarrhea is during this time of the year, Nguyen Thi Hanh Le, deputy director of HCMC Children’s Hospital No. 2 told Thanh Nien on Monday. Le said there were 120 respiratory in-patients using 70 beds at the hospital Tuesday. She noted that children around two to three years of age easily catch respiratory diseases, colds and viruses every time the weather changes. The number of respiratory patients at the city’s Children Hospital No.1 has been increasing with more than 100 children brought for examination every day, mostly under age 3. Doctor Nguyen Phuong Hoa Binh from the Children Hospital No.2 added that there were also asthma-related cases. Pham Thi Ngoc Tuyet, dean of the hospital’s digestion department said her department received more than 600 children in the first three weeks of this month, adding that the department often treats 120 or more children at a time. Mothers were advised to keep their children warm and pay attention to food hygiene, especially until the end of January, Children Hospital No. 2’s Le said. Doctors Nhuan of the Central Children Hospital said parents should strictly follow doctors’ prescriptions for antibiotics and diarrhea medicine. Medical experts also warned about mumps, rubella and chicken-pox among children in January and February. Reported by Thanh Nien staff

ponge cakes caused food poisoning: inspector

Sponge cakes caused food poisoning: inspectors

Sponge cakes bought from an outside supplier had caused the food poisoning that sent around 400 students of a primary school in Ho Chi Minh City to hospitals on Monday, health inspectors said Tuesday.

The sponge cakes were supplied by the Thanh Phu catering company in District 9 to the Phuoc Binh Primary School in the same district. On Monday, the students had a meal of cuttlefish, cabbage soup, sponge cakes, and milk at noon and in the afternoon. Between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day, around 400 were hospitalized for stomach-ache and vomiting. Many of them were admitted to the District 9 Hospital and other hospitals in the city. Health authorities also said Tuesday they had banned the circulation of the batch of sponge cakes Thanh Phu had supplied to the school. Further investigations are continuing to find out other possible causes of poisoning, the inspectors said. Reported by Thanh Tung

A smile in place

For many poor children, corrective facial surgery opens the door to self confidence.

“Every time she smiles, I cry, because her mouth then seems to express the end of the pain of losses and malformation,” says the mother of a one-year-old girl. “The only wish in my life” says the middle-aged woman, who wishes to stay unnamed, “is to give her a smile.” She believes that an illness during her pregnancy resulted in her daughter being born with a cleft-palate. Her husband left her because of the child’s malformation, and she is too poor to afford any corrective surgery for her daughter. A long waiting list It is 2.30 p.m. on December 15. A corrective surgery for cleft lip and palate gets underway at the General Hospital in the Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang. The first beneficiary of Operation Smile Vietnam (OSV)’s campaign for the Mekong Delta launched early this month is a seven-month-old baby. After crying for a long time, she is given anesthesia and goes into a deep sleep. Her thin body makes it hard for doctors to locate her vein, while her little mouth causes difficulties in using knives, scissors and needles to suture her cleft lip. Around 45 minutes later, the surgery ends. Doctor Nguyen Chi Cuong says he never feels the same before each surgery because the needs are different each time. This time, since it is rather “a cosmetic surgery” in nature, perfection is one of the requirements. However, such surgeries are not only for beautifying, but also for bringing smiles to the faces of children for the upcoming Lunar New Year festival (Tet), giving them the confidence to socialize with the community, says Director Nguyen Manh Hung of the surgery sponsor Military Telecom Corporation (Viettel). At 18, Tran Thi Dieu Hien, who is from Dong Thap Province, seems to be the oldest patient amongst 150 children awaiting surgeries for cleft lips and palates at the general hospital. Hien’s mother says since they are poor, they could only afford surgery for suturing her lip over the past 18 years, while the palate keeps causing difficulties in her speech, and even eating and drinking. The difficulties do not stop there. “I feel so hurt when some days she runs home crying after being teased by other children” the mother says. “Hien has almost never had a chance to keep her head up [when walking outside of home], she says. She does not dare to talk to strangers, either, because “no one understands what she is saying.” Director Lam Hoai Phuong of the National Hospital of Odonto-Stomatology in Ho Chi Minh City (NHOS-HCMC) says in Vietnam one of every 500 newborn babies has the defects. It is estimated that around 15,000 children are living with the facial deformity, she says. The causes can include chemicals, heredity, nutrition and diseases that the mother suffers during her pregnancy, according to Phuong. Except for heredity, other causes can be prevented, Phuong says. Whatever the cause is, the defects still can be treated if the baby receives timely surgery, consultancy and speech therapy, she adds. The timely surgery for cleft lips is when the baby is six to eight months old, and nine to 12 months old for the palate. However, it is not easy for the poor to afford the measures, Phuong says. The mothers hardly receive enough nutrition or they often suffer from diseases during pregnancy. And even after their children are born with defects, the families are too poor to even consult with doctors about the problem. Operation Smile Since 1989, the non-governmental OSV, part of the US-based Operation Smile Inc., has helped more than 12,000 Vietnamese children and young adults with cleft lip and palate deformities through local and international surgical missions. This year more than 300 children with deformities in the Mekong Delta region will receive free surgeries from December 15, 2008 to January 2, 2009 with the cooperation of NHOS-HCMC and a VND1.4 billion (US$82,000) donation from Viettel. The first day the campaign was launched at the Tien Giang General Hospital with 150 children from the provinces of Tien Giang, Hau Giang, Ben Tre, Long An and Dong Thap. Surgeries are planned to be performed at three sites – Tien Giang General Hospital, Kien Giang General Hospital and Vinh Long General Hospital. Each surgery normally takes 45-60 minutes and costs $150 for medicines, hospital fees, meals and transportation during the operation, according to OSV. Operation Smile was founded by Dr. William Magee, a plastic surgeon, and his wife, Kathleen, a nurse and clinical social worker. Source: Lao Dong

Belly dance fever

Vietnamese belly dancer Huong Giang (C) and other dancers from the Apsara Dance Studio perform on December 11, 2008 at the Second Vietnamese Belly Dance Festival at the Sum Villa in Hanoi A belly dance craze is sweeping the capital of Vietnam, dropping jaws, lifting spirits and - the dancers say - empowering women.

Since the sensual Oriental dance arrived in Hanoi two years ago, six dance groups have popped up and more than 1,000 women have joined, including students, businesswomen, journalists and even a police officer. "I've lived in many places in Asia - Hong Kong, Shanghai, the Philippines, India - but in Vietnam belly dancing took off faster than anywhere else," said Ara Hwang, the South Korean choreographer who brought the dance to Hanoi. "I came here from Shanghai to teach salsa and I saw that Vietnamese women are attractive and have lots of passion, so I thought, why not belly dancing?" she said, sitting in the bamboo cafe of her Apsara dance studio. Vietnam's first male belly dancer KevinQ at the Second Vietnamese Belly Dance Festival Hwang said she was surprised to see how the dance form, born centuries ago in the harems of the Middle East, struck an immediate chord with modern women in urban Vietnam, a society now undergoing rapid change. "In Vietnamese culture, traditionally you are not supposed to show your feelings," she said. "But I know Vietnamese women have a very, very strong character, and this has given them a way to express themselves." "It's boosted my confidence," said Huong Giang, a newspaper journalist who got hooked after taking a belly dance course to write a story. "It's kind of erotic and exciting, and it's separate from your normal life." Not everyone here initially shared the enthusiasm, and some fathers, husbands and boyfriends took some convincing, the dancers say. "At first my boyfriend didn't want me to perform," said Nguyen Kieu Trinh, a marketing student who said she first dreamt about belly dancing when she watched Middle Eastern and Indian movies as a child. "But he saw how I felt the change in my body and in my mind, and that I feel happier, and now he really supports the belly dancing." Apsara runs a dance troupe for women aged mostly in their 40s, named Hoa Sen (Lotus), and even their husbands, after some initial grumbling, now feel proud to see their wives express their emotions and femininity on stage, said Hwang. "In the beginning, people often think this is something you see in a disco or in a bar, but we don't care," said Hwang. "We educate them with our attitude, and people are starting to change and understand." The mind shift seems to be working. More than 500 people showed up this month for Vietnam's Second Belly Dance Festival, held in the Sum Villa, a former state residence that is now one of Hanoi's swankiest venues. Through thick clouds of shisha pipe tobacco smoke, in a room laid out with Oriental carpets, the audience was spellbound by the gyrations of Apsara's Bastet Douat troupe and groups called Sahara, JAWA and Esmeralda. The show even featured Vietnam's first male belly dancer, KevinQ, who impressed with his dramatic and moody Tribal Gothic solo performance. For the event to go ahead, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism had to give the green light. "It wasn't clear from the beginning," said Hwang. "But they came to the rehearsal, and in the end they accepted that this is an artform. "Vietnamese people are very open-minded, especially the women," she added. "In two years, so much has changed. I feel like this is a revolution." Source: AFP

400 HCMC pupils suffer food poisoning

About 400 students of a primary school in Ho Chi Minh City had to receive emergency medical treatment Monday for food poisoning.

The cause of the poisoning has not been confirmed. The affected students of Phuoc Binh primary school in District 12 had a meal of cuttlefish, cabbage soup, sponge cake, and milk at noon and in the afternoon. Between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Monday, around 400 were hospitalized for stomach-ache and vomiting. Many of them were admitted to the District 9 Hospital and other hospitals in the city. Inspectors from the HCMC’s Health Department rushed to the scene to collect the food samples for analysis, but are not yet to certain of the cause. Reported by Thanh Tung

Sponge cakes caused food poisoning: inspectors

Sponge cakes bought from an outside supplier had caused the food poisoning that sent around 400 students of a primary school in Ho Chi Minh City to hospitals on Monday, health inspectors said Tuesday.

The sponge cakes were supplied by the Thanh Phu catering company in District 9 to the Phuoc Binh Primary School in the same district. On Monday, the students had a meal of cuttlefish, cabbage soup, sponge cakes, and milk at noon and in the afternoon. Between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. that day, around 400 were hospitalized for stomach-ache and vomiting. Many of them were admitted to the District 9 Hospital and other hospitals in the city. Health authorities also said Tuesday they had banned the circulation of the batch of sponge cakes Thanh Phu had supplied to the school. Further investigations are continuing to find out other possible causes of poisoning, the inspectors said.

For some, progress brings TV but no clinic

Chut children in Rao Tre village of Ha Tinh Province. They no longer live in caves like their forefathers and can get state assistance to go to school. In Vietnam’s central mountainous regions in 1959, the Chut minority lived in caves. Now they have stilt houses and farmland to cultivate.

The Chut village of Rao Tre in Ha Tinh Province lies between the Ka Day and Lam mountains. As the only flat land in the area, it was chosen by the government for the group to build a civilized community. It is now home to 32 families with a total of 124 people. “The village still faces difficulties but we not longer have to deal with hunger and cold,” said Ho Kinh, who has been serving as the village head for more than 10 years. “Thanks to the government and the border guards.” There are eight border guards who take turns to help the villagers and answer their questions. Kinh used to live in the caves and thus changes brought by the new life in Huong Lien Commune in Huong Khe District has a special meaning for him. Now the villagers have cattle as their biggest asset, which can help them cultivate other crops. They go to the market for food and they send their children to school. There’s a small school in the village, where the children are taught to read and write by a teacher from the lowland. The children can receive state sponsorship to go to Huong Khe District if they wish to continue their studies. Two years ago, the road running through the village was tarred. Each household is also connected to power and clean water. Chut villagers love watching television and almost every family owns one, which is only ever off during a blackout. Every evening, the sound of music from families’ DVD players echoes through the village. Still, changes that Chut people in Rao Tre village have been enjoying are minor. The village has no medical center, no dispensary and no market. When they’re severely ill, the villagers have to travel to the commune medical center and if they don’t feel too sick, they just stay at home in bed. The village has only three or four inhabitants who’ve reached the age of 70, according to the village head. The villagers don’t know much about trading or spending money. To go to the market, they have to walk to neighboring Huong Lam Commune, a round trip that takes around three hours. Ho Tinh said she only goes to the market once a week as it’s a little bit too far. “Also, I don’t have the money to go so often,” she said. The villagers travel only on foot. “There’s no need to buy a bike as everyone else is walking,” said local Ho Phuc. “It’s fun to walk together.” Ho Sam said he used to ride a bicycle and a motorbike when he studied in the district but has stopped since coming back to the village. “As I’ve seen no one drive, I’ve almost forgotten how to drive,” he said. There are around 4,000 Chut people in Vietnam, mostly living in central Quang Binh Province, the southern neighbor of Ha Tinh. Reported by Nguyen Phuc – Nguyen Thanh

HCMC doctors remove huge tumor from four-day-old infant

A newborn weighing 5.8 kilograms had a 2.5-kilogram tumor removed at Children Hospital No. 2 in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday evening.

The son of Nguyen Thi T. from southern Kien Giang Province was born last Saturday at HCMC Tu Du Hospital. Due to presence of the large tumor, the infant was transferred to Children Hospital No. 2 for an operation which lasted three hours. Doctor Huynh Ngoc Son, the lead surgeon conducting the operation, said the malignant tumor was located inside the buttocks area. Son said the operation was urgent as the child would have suffered heart failure due to blood being diverted to the tumor. The baby is presently under care in the hospital’s recovery department. Reported by Thanh Tung

Cancer vaccines embroiled in controversy

Vietnam’s Health Ministry has approved two vaccines against cervical cancer but concerns have risen about their effectiveness.

Participants at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday warned against complacency among women getting themselves vaccinated, saying their long-term effectiveness was still to be ascertained. Meanwhile, local reports have surfaced about unethical lobbying by medical companies to obtain regulatory approval for their products, including vaccines. Cao Minh Quang, the deputy health minister, had on July 24 announced regulatory approval for the Gardasil vaccine in Vietnam, manufactured by the US-based Merck Sharp & Dohme Company (MSD), also known as Merck & Co. The vaccine is to protect women from 9 to 26 years of age against human papillomavirus (HPV) strains 16 and 18 that currently cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. On November 18, Quang approved the Cervarix vaccine, manufactured by England’s GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for women 10 to 55 years of age, also effective against HPV types 16 and 18. However, officials of local cancer associations have raised doubts about the vaccines’ capacity and questioned lobbying efforts made during the application for approval. Gardasil and Cervarix are supposed to work after three injections, with the former costing US$100 each and the latter $37. More than 140 types of HPV are acknowledged to cause cervical cancer with 16 and 18 classified as high-risk. As the approved vaccines cannot be effective against all HPV infections that cause the disease, people shouldn’t think that they will be absolutely safe from cervical cancer once they are vaccinated, experts said at the conference in HCMC on Saturday. Nguyen Chan Hung, chairman of the HCMC Cancer Association, said the vaccination still “surrenders to 30 percent of cervical cancer cases.” The vaccines have been experimented worldwide for only six years and there’s little evidence to ensure that they will be effective for long, Hung said. Professor Nguyen Ba Duc, head of the Cancer Treatment and Prevention Institute, said only those women who have not had sex will benefit much from the vaccines. Nguyen Thi Tuong Vi, GSK’s vaccine director in Vietnam, said Cervarix has been approved in 90 countries, including Europe in 2007. Vi said clinical experiments of the vaccine had been conducted in Vietnam. However, Do Gia Canh from the Health Ministry said “the matter should be considered further and we shouldn’t approve the vaccine for women aged 10 to 55.” Among the countries that Cervarix has won approval, 40 gave it for women aged 10 to 25, six for 10 to 45 and only two for 10 to 55. The European Community’s health agency has only approved the vaccine for women aged 10 to 25 and the clinical experiment in Vietnam was only conducted on 220 women 25 to 40 years of age, Canh said. On July 18, Quang sent a letter to MSD’s Chief Executive Officer Richard Clark and administrative president for the Asia-Pacific region, Ramesh Subramanian, to complain about the company’s unethical lobbying activities in Vietnam, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reported Monday. According to Tuoi Tre, Quang suggested that MSD cooperates and investigates the activities of its Vietnam office. Kha My Linh, head of MSD Vietnam, told Tuoi Tre that an MSD investigation that began mid-August did not find any evidence about her office bribing or lobbying any Vietnamese official while seeking approval for Gardasil. Linh said MSD had sent the investigation’s results to the Health Ministry, according to Tuoi Tre. Meanwhile, the regional director of GSK, Goh Choo Beng, has said the company sends the same application to every country for regulatory approval and has made no special effort to intervene in the decision of Vietnam’s Health Ministry. Reported by Thanh Tung – Nam Son

US NGO funds major healthcare upgrade in Hue

The Atlantic Philanthropies will provide US$8.5 million in nonrefundable aid to improve medical facilities and train staff in central Thua Thien-Hue Province, under an agreement signed Thursday.

The $8.5 million will partly fund a project on “Upgrading, constructing and equipping facilities for health clinics in wards, communes and districts.” About 70 new clinics will be constructed and 20 health centers will be upgraded under the project. The provincial government will provide $2.6 million for the project which runs until 2011. The Atlantic Philanthropies, founded in 1982, focuses on assisting disadvantaged children and youth, and issues of population health, reconciliation, and human rights. Source: Lao Dong

Southern Vietnam hospitals work to solve patient overload

A doctor at HCMC’s Tu Du Maternity Hospital scans a pregnant woman during the usual lunchtime break. Hospitals around Ho Chi Minh City have streamlined admission and billing procedures and extended their hours to try to keep up with the increasing demand for medical care.

“Streamlining the hospital’s procedures will help minimize patient waiting times,” said Nguyen Anh Dung, deputy director of Gia Dinh People’s Hospital in Binh Thanh District. Dung said the hospital had eliminated several formalities for patients with state health insurance, assigned more staff to admit patients and started collecting hospital fees at different places around the hospital. At District 5’s Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital, chronic patients will be able to collect their medication once every two weeks or once a month instead of having to come to the hospital every week for their drugs, said director Nguyen Thi Hung. Hung said next year the hospital will install computers at patient reception sections to speed up admissions. In Ho Chi Minh City, one of the major changes at Gia Dinh, Nguyen Tri Phuong and many other hospitals is that doctors start earlier every day and work through the usual one-anda-half hour lunch break. Tran Thanh My, director of the HCMC Trauma and Orthopedic Hospital in District 5, said the hospital manages to examine an extra 200 patients a day by using the break time. By starting at 6 a.m. instead of 7:30 a.m. and treating patients through lunch, HCMC Tumor Hospital in Binh Thanh District performs an extra 500 ultrasounds a week and examines an extra 180 to 200 patients a day, hospital director Le Hoang Minh said. Minh said the hospital was also scheduling surgery on the weekend, operating on 50 to 60 patients each weekend. Pham Viet Thanh, director of Tu Du Maternity Hospital in District 1, said the hospital doctors were divided into two shifts: from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Some hospitals have also given equipment and training to smaller district and provincial hospitals in an effort to reduce the flood of patients to the city. Hung Vuong Hospital has trained staff at Hoc Mon and Binh Chanh districts in obstetric surgery while the Trauma and Orthopedic Hospital has given expertise and equipment to provincial Khanh Hoa Hospital in the central region and hospitals in southern Kien Giang and Tien Giang provinces. Health authorities attributed the patient overload at many central hospitals in HCMC and Hanoi to the fact that residents don’t trust district and province level healthcare, preferring to travel to major city hospitals. In Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta, from next year, two private hospitals will, for the first time, start accepting patients with state health insurance in an effort to ease the overload of patients at the city’s public hospitals. Previously, people with state health insurance were only able to be treated at public hospitals. Until the end of this year, Can Tho Insurance Agency will help the state-owned companies, which must register where their employees are treated as part of the state insurance scheme, switch from public hospitals to the private Hoan My Cuu Long Hospital and Tay Do General Hospital, insurance agency director Tran Van Minh said. Tay Do Hospital is able to offer Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), computerized tomography (CT) and 4D ultrasound scanning while Hoan My Cuu Long can also treat womb fibroma and early-stage liver cancer, perform hip and knee replacements and provide dialysis. Hoan My Cuu Long Hospital treats patients from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a one hour break at noon from Monday to Saturday and from 7 a.m. until noon on Sunday while Tay Do General Hospital opens at 6:30 a.m. every morning. Ho Van Sanh, deputy director of Hoan My Cuu Long Hospital, said insurance holders would receive the same treatment as other patients. In many hospitals, insurance holders often receive less attention and substandard services. Tay Do General Hospital will be able to treat insurance holders with most conditions, according to the hospital director Huynh Quang Mau. Mau said the hospital could call on the services of 60 doctors in the southern region and was able to deal with a variety of critical cases. Reported by Thanh Tung – Quang Minh Nhat

Work starts on new HCMC hospital

Ngoc Tam Hospital Joint-Stock Company broke ground for a 500 -bed hospital in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 2 Wednesday.

The modern general hospital will specialize in obstetrics and pediatrics, company chairman Dang Phuoc Dua said. It will also provide health care services and nurse training when it opens in 2010, Dua said. The VND800 billion (US$47.9 million) hospital is being built on a three-hectare site in Thanh My Loi Ward. It will consist of nine stories and 16 operating rooms. Reported by Thanh Tung

Japan helps Vietnam’s hospitals procure medical equipment

Japan will provide more than US$256,000 for urgently-needed medical equipment for three hospitals in the central province of Binh Thuan and the southernmost province of Ca Mau.

Under agreements signed in Ho Chi Minh City Wednesday by Consul General of the Japanese Consulate in HCMC, and the leaders of the two provinces, the General Clinic for Phan Ri Cua Area in Binh Thuan Province will receive $86,000; and Dam Doi General Hospital and Ca Mau Women’s Hospital, both in Ca Mau Province, will get a total of $170,000. The three projects fall under Japan’s Grant Assistance for Grassroots and Human Security Projects (GGP), which has funded about 90 projects in the southern region with more than $6 million since 1995. Reported by Van Khoa

Officials to review cancer drug approvals

Vietnam’s Health Ministry Wednesday launched an investigation into the regulatory approval given to two cervical cancer vaccines.

The investigation team, led by Deputy Minister Trinh Quan Huan, and including chief inspector Tran Quang Trung, Nguyen Huy Quang from the legislation office and Nguyen Trong Thuy from the staff organizing office, will have 15 days to report its findings, Health Minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu announced. On July 24, Deputy Health Minister Cao Minh Quang approved Gardasil, made by US drug-maker Merck Sharp & Dohme Company, as a vaccine for women aged 9 to 26 against human papillomavirus (HPV) strains 16 and 18 that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. On November 18, Quang approved English GlaxoSmithKline’s Cervarix vaccine for women 10 to 55 years of age, also effective against HPV types 16 and 18. However, questions have been raised about unethical lobbying by medical companies to obtain the approvals. The team will investigate all the documents related to the approvals and the clinical trials of the two vaccines. The investigation will also examine the role of the Health Ministry’s Science and Training Office and Vietnam Drug Management Bureau. Truong Viet Dung, head of the Science and Training Office, Wednesday said clinical trials in Vietnam for Cervarix were only conducted on women 25 to 40 years of age. The trial aimed “to check the vaccines’ safety, not their effectiveness,” Dung said. He said the office made no conclusion about the vaccines being effective for women of different ages, adding that the final decision about their usage was based on scientific research done overseas and provided by the makers of the vaccines. Dung said there had been “no research to prove that the vaccines could protect a woman against cervical cancer forever, no findings about for how long the vaccines will remain effective or how often the vaccination should be administered.” Gardasil and Cervarix are supposed to work after three injections, with Gardasil costing US$100 a shot and Cervarix $37 a shot. Reported by Nam Son

Woman retracts complaints of kidney theft after test

A woman has retracted claims that doctors from a Ho Chi Minh City based obstetrics hospital stole her kidney after tests showed the kidney was not missing only abnormally small.

A computed tomography (CT) scan conducted at Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital’s Medic Diagnosis Center showed the left kidney of the 53 year old woman known only as N.T.N.T. measured only 11 by 25 millimeters, while the right one was normal. T. underwent the test on Monday after receiving the hospital’s findings that doctors did not take her kidney. She retracted her claims on Wednesday. Last week T. complained to news agencies that she underwent ovarian surgery on November 26 last year at Hung Vuong Hospital and was released in December. On November 2 last year T. had her health checked at the Medic Diagnosis Center. The test results showed she had a large ovarian tumor, while she was not suffering from kidney stones. However, when she had a check-up at the medical center in October this year, the results showed she didn’t have a left kidney. After another test at a different hospital showed the same result, she accused the surgeons at Hung Vuong hospital of stealing her kidney. The hospital held a press conference last Wednesday presenting evidence to confirm that the doctors did not take T.’s kidney. Experts said T. was born with a shrunken kidney, a condition which affects one in every 1,100 people. Reported by Thanh Tung

Dengue cases up by 35 percent in HCMC

Ho Chi Minh City has so far this year recorded nearly 14,000 cases of dengue fever or a 35 percent year-on-year increase, a senior city health official has said.

Dr. Nguyen Dac Tho, deputy director of the city’s Preventive Health Center was addressing a meeting on preventing and fighting epidemics held Wednesday. He said while the city has managed to control somewhat the spread of the mosquito-borne fever, the situation remained complicated. Districts 6, 8, 10, 11, Tan Binh and Tan Phu are still the worst-hit areas. Tho also cautioned district health agencies against ignoring malaria as a threat, noting a patient had recently died because it was discovered too late. Reported by Thanh Tung

Glue sniffing on rise amongst HCMC youth

Glue sniffing appears to be an alarming new trend amongst many Ho Chi Minh City youth looking for a cheap high.

Teens report “ecstatic” feelings after inhaling the fumes from industrial-strength glue squeezed into plastic bags. The glues are sold in stores around the city ranging from VND2,000-17,000 (US$0.12-1) depending on the tubes’ weight, according to S., a self-proclaimed addict in the city’s Tan Binh District. S. said his glue-sniffing group had more than 100 members, most in their teens. He said one VND2,000 tube could be inhaled over 30 minutes while a tube costing around VND6,000-7,000 could be sniffed over an hour or more. One morning early this week, reporters witnessed a group of six adolescents, including both males and females, sniffing glue out of bags in an Internet shop in Tan Phu District. Outside the shop, tens of glue tubes were scattered on the ground. Fifteen-year-old T. said they were just sniffing glue, not drugs. Th., a girl in the group, said the cheap glue could produce feelings of euphoria and was less costly than other drugs. T. said the group had been sniffing glue for months after being taught how to do it by older peers. Local store owners said they regularly sold glue to many adolescents – sometimes tens of tubes at a time. One store owner on Au Co Street, who wished to be unnamed, said that since 2006 he had discovered several teens purchasing glue to get high and had informed local police. A vendor on Huynh Van Chinh Street said a group of about 10 youngsters gathers daily in a yard in font of the Huynh Van Chinh apartment block to sniff glue. Many local residents had approached the group to warn them of the dangers, the vendor said, but received threats of attack from the group members. A retired state worker living in the block said that in 2006, there were just a few glue sniffers in the area but now the number had risen to hundreds. A police officer in the district said the local police department was aware of the dangers of glue sniffing. He said tests showed the glues contained harmful chemicals which affected the nervous system in similar ways to other street drugs. But according to the officer, law enforcement is powerless to stop the practice as glue is not classified as an illegal “drug.” Toxic effects Reporters brought two types of glues – reportedly the most popular amongst teens – to the Hai Dang Joint-Stock Company which performs laboratory tests on substances to analyze their chemical make-up. Test results showed that one of the glue brands contained at least three toxic substances including methylene choloride, ethyl acetate and toluene. The other brand contained the same substances as well as cyclohexane. Professor Chu Pham Ngoc Son, technical consultant for the company, said each of the toxic chemicals were capable of producing euphoric feelings but that no research had been done on the effects of the combined substances. Nguyen Huu Duc from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Medicine and Pharmaceuticals said glue sniffing can become highly addictive. In addition to the short-term pleasurable feelings these chemicals induce, glue fumes can also cause drowsiness, fatigue, dizziness, depression, delusion, insanity, and even unconsciousness and death following a high level of exposure. Duc added that Vietnam hasn’t got any statistics on glue sniffing yet. Source: Tuoi Tre

Conjoined twins to be separated before Christmas

Vietnam National Hospital of Pediatrics in Hanoi decided Monday to perform separation surgery on conjoined twins on December 22.

The twins – Nguyen Van Cu and Nguyen Van Co – were born to Dam Thi Chuyen last Tuesday in north central Nghe An Province and have been diagnosed with a heart abnormality. The hospital said some 20 local doctors would participate in the operation with heart specialists likely coming from the Republic of Korea or Italy to provide professional assistance. It will also sponsor the total cost of the operation, which is estimated at VND100 million (US$5,800). Reported by Nam Son

Over 80 percent of Vietnamese children suffer tooth decay

A child has his teeth examined at a HCMC dental clinic. Experts report that 80-90 percent of Vietnamese children aged six to eight have tooth decay. A recent conference highlighted an alarming rate of dental disease among the country’s youth and the need to improve dental education.

More than 80 percent of Vietnamese primary school students have tooth- and mouth-related diseases, while schools fail to provide adequate dental health education, according to a recent dentistry conference held in Hanoi. It is estimated that 80-90 percent of children aged six to eight have tooth decay, said Trinh Dinh Hai, head of the National Institute of Odonto-Stomatology Vietnam (NIOS). Each child has as many as six decayed baby (or milk) teeth, Hai said at the conference held by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) on Wednesday. And most children don’t receive proper treatment for their decayed teeth, Hai said. More than 60 percent of children and 50 percent of adults have never had a dental exam, the conference heard. The number of children with tooth and mouth disease in urban areas is higher than other areas, despite urban children receiving better dental and stomatological care, the Administration of Preventive Medicine under MOH reported. This is thought to be due to the increased amount of sweets consumed by urban children, the agency said, adding that a lack of fluoride in children’s diets could also contribute to cavities. The number of children with inclined, or severely crooked teeth, also stands at around 80-90 percent. Experts said this was due to children’s baby teeth not receiving proper and timely care. Dental services dearth All schools are required to offer dental education, exams and services at school, but according to HCMC Central Hospital of Odontology and Stomatology Vice Director Ngo Dong Khanh, a school dentist may have from 13,000 to 17,000 patients. The number of student patients may be as high as 30,000 for dentists working in the Central Highlands region and disadvantaged provinces. The rates for other countries stand between 1/500 and 1/1,000, according to Khanh. According to the conference, just eight out of the country’s 64 provinces and cities currently provide qualified dental care services at school for primary students. NIOS said 46 provinces lack the human resources necessary to run dental programs at schools while poor policies make it difficult to attract new staff. Forty-seven provinces, meanwhile, said they suffer from a shortage of funding and cannot afford dental programs. Thirty-three provinces reported not having sufficient dental devices and machinery to offer services. Other experts said there needs to be better cooperation between health and educational agencies. Difficulties with human resources and funding have forced several school dental offices to stop operating, said Dr. Nguyen Tai Dung, in charge of school health under the HCMC Education and Training Department. He said 39 out of 400 primary schools in the southern hub have closed down their dental offices, while nearly 26 percent reported they were struggling to keep their offices open. A representative from central coastal Khanh Hoa Province’s Health Department said schools can employ vocational school graduates to run dental care programs with the provision of further training, instead of recruiting dentists with university degrees. Hai said it is not expensive to run dental care programs at schools and that communities should work the cost into their annual budget or require parents to help pay. Without a preventive program, it will cost much more in the long run to treat tooth and mouth diseases, said Hai. He suggested that MoET introduce dental care programs into its criteria for ranking a school. La Quy Don, deputy head of the Student Affairs Department under MoET, said one of the ministry’s immediate objectives is to establish courses to train health staff for schools, while improving the skills of current staff to make dental care programs more effective. VIETNAM’S DENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION OBJECTIVES: All schools are to teach kindergarten and primary students how to practice good dental hygiene as set out by health and educational agencies. Students are to gargle with fluoride and brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste each week. Students are to have their teeth and mouth examined and treated when in need. Students are to receive fillings for cavities to prevent further tooth decay. Reported by Tue Nguyen Source: The Ho Chi Minh City Odonto-maxillo-facial Hospital’s website

Health ministry sets limit to melamine in food

Melamine tests are conducted at a Hanoi-based laboratory. The Ministry of Health will appoint three agencies to act as arbitrators in case of controversial melamine test results. The maximum allowable amount of “unavoidable contamination” of industrial chemical melamine in food for human consumption will be 2.5 milligrams per kilogram, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced Friday.

Food for children under 36 months is allowed to contain melamine at the rate of not more than 1 milligram per kilogram, according the MOH regulations issued on Thursday. The ratios are based on the tolerable melamine rates announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) last Friday, the Administration for Food Safety and Hygiene head Nguyen Cong Khan said Friday. The limits were also approved by WHO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the country’s leading experts in nutrition and toxicology, Khan said. Khan said “unavoidable contamination” of melamine was often caused by packaging or preservation devices during the manufacturing process. This is different from the deliberate contamination by manufacturers to increase the amount of protein in milk and other dairy products, as occurred in China earlier this year, he said. In China since September, at least six children died and a further 294,000 fell sick after consuming melamine-contaminated milk products. MOH has proposed WHO provide information specifying what rate of melamine contamination can cause kidney stones, according to Khan. However, he said food would have to have substantially more melamine than the new allowable limit to cause health problems. “So far melamine-contaminated milk discovered in Vietnam has all been imported,” he said, adding that no local raw material milk had been found to be tainted with melamine, an industrial chemical used to make plastic. MOH will appoint three agencies to act as arbitrators in case of controversial melamine tests. “If needed, [the ministry] will have products tested abroad.” The ministry and related ministries have also proposed policies to support businesses which accidentally imported melamine-tainted milk, he said. At a meeting held in Ottawa in Canada last week, WHO set the tolerable daily intake (TDI) of melamine at 0.2 mg/kg body weight. This means a 50 kilogram person could tolerate 10 mg melamine per day. “TDI represents the tolerable amount of unavoidable contaminant in food that a person can ingest on a daily basis without appreciable health risk,” international experts said at the meeting. Reported by Lien Chau

Doctors didn’t steal kidney, says hospital

A southern metro-based obstetrics hospital has denied a patient’s allegations that doctors took out her kidney during an ovarian tumor surgery, according to a press conference held on Wednesday.

“We confirm that with an ovarian tumor surgery, it is impossible to take a kidney,” representatives from Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 5 said. There was “no mistake in the surgery,” the hospital said. Ovaries and kidneys are located 25 to 30 centimeters apart, so surgeons could not remove the kidney through the incision made to operate on an ovarian tumor, the hospital’s director Tran Son Thach said. “Moreover, the operation lasted 85 minutes for surgeons to remove the tumor, cut out the ovaries and other related parts, so it is not long enough to take the kidney,” he told the conference held in HCMC. More importantly, obstetricians do not have expertise in removing kidneys, according to Thach. Urinary Department Head Tran Ngoc Sinh from Cho Ray Hospital who was invited to the conference, said patient N.T.N.T was given spinal anesthesia during the surgery, while kidney surgery requires complete anesthesia. In addition, for kidney surgery, surgeons have to make an incision in the patient’s back, Sinh said. For ovarian tumor surgery, the incision is made in the lower abdomen. The medical waste from the operation has also been identified as an ovarian tumor, not a kidney, Sinh said. T., 53, complained to news agencies on Monday that she underwent ovarian surgery on November 26 last year at Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital and was released in December. On November 2 last year T. had her health checked at the HCMC’s Medic Diagnosis Center. The test results showed she had a large ovarian tumor, while she was not suffering from kidney stones. However, when she had a check-up at the medical center in October this year, the results said she didn’t have a left kidney. She thought the test results might be wrong so she got a second test at Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital last month, which confirmed that she only had one kidney, making her believe the surgeons at Hung Vuong Obstetrics Hospital had stolen her other one. Some experts supposed that T. had been born with only one kidney, and the 20-centimeter ovarian tumor had concealed the missing kidney in the scans. The rate of people born with one kidney in the world is one in every 1,100, which is not that rare, according to Sinh. Thach told the conference that they still needed to contact the patient to give her more details. Reported by Thanh Tung

Dengue cases up by 35 percent in HCMC

Ho Chi Minh City has so far this year recorded nearly 14,000 cases of dengue fever or a 35 percent year-on-year increase, a senior city health official has said.

Dr. Nguyen Dac Tho, deputy director of the city’s Preventive Health Center was addressing a meeting on preventing and fighting epidemics held Wednesday. He said while the city has managed to control somewhat the spread of the mosquito-borne fever, the situation remained complicated. Districts 6, 8, 10, 11, Tan Binh and Tan Phu are still the worst-hit areas. Tho also cautioned district health agencies against ignoring malaria as a threat, noting a patient had recently died because it was discovered too late. Reported by Thanh Tung

HCMC centers agree to new radiation rules

A health worker uses a scanning machine at the scanning department of Binh Dan Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City The 52 X-ray centers, hospitals and research centers in Ho Chi Minh City that use radioactive material Friday agreed to abide by new safety rules.

Phan Minh Tan, director of the HCMC Department of Science and Technology, said poor management of radioactive sources could harm the environment and human health. HCMC has 644 radioactive sources, including 208 active sources and 436 kept in store, a meeting heard Friday. The meeting was organized by the department and the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety and Control (VARNSAC). However, many of the storage facilities were not designed to keep radioactive material secure, VARNSAC Head Ngo Dang Nhan said. Nhan showed the meeting photos of mistakes in storing radioactive material at local establishments, including a radiotherapy device not being separated from other medical equipment. He said the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) was planning to establish a national storage facility for radioactive waste. For the time being, MOST has authorized the Hanoi Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology and the Da Lat Nuclear Research Institute to store radioactive sources. It is estimated that 50 percent of the centers in Vietnam that use radioactive material are privately-owned, which makes it hard for the state to control the proper use and storage of the material, according to Dinh Ngoc Quang, a VARNSAC offical. Thirteen Vietnamese health centers, meanwhile, are reported to have 22 radioactive sources operating at high danger levels. In Vietnam, radioactive sources have long been used, yet radiation safety matters have not been considered a high priority, Quang said. A series of radioactivity scares have been reported recently. Sixty-three workers at the Dung Quat oil refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai were sent to a nuclear research institute to test for radioactive contamination after high radioactivity levels were recorded near their work site in late March. In December last year, M&C Petroleum Technical Services Company (PTSC M&C) in southern Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province had to evacuate its site and rush several workers to hospital when radioactive material went missing from a testing device. The workers tested negative for radiation poisoning. New radiation safety regulations – known as the radioactive security assurance statute – were issued in July. Reported by Mai Vong

World AIDS day parade in Hanoi

More than 3,500 people Sunday attended a meeting and a parade in Hanoi to mark 2008 World AIDS Day on December 1.

The Ministry of Health said more than 41,400 AIDS patients, 83 percent of whom are between 20 and 39 years old, have died since the first HIV/AIDS case was diagnosed in Vietnam in 1990. Of the current 135,000 plus HIV-positive people in Vietnam, 17.8 percent are women. The whole country has 203 clinics that provide medicine for AIDS patients and 220 clinics where AIDS patients can receive free treatment. All pregnant women who are HIV positive are provided with free medicine to prevent the disease from being transmitted to their babies. Reported by Nam Son

Authorities sanction ‘safe’ melamine rate in feed

An animal feed stall at a market in HCMC. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has banned a melamine concentration of more than 2.5 ppm in one kilogram of animal feed. A ratio of 2.5 milligrams of melamine in one kilogram of animal feed is considered safe, according to a new regulation released by Vietnam’s agricultural authorities.

Hoang Kim Giao, head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Animal Husbandry Bureau, said Vietnam typically doesn’t allow melamine in feed but feed with that little amount can be considered essentially “melamine-free.” Studies conducted nationwide and abroad have shown that animals eating feed containing such an amount of melamine or less, causes no harm to people who consume their meat or products, Thanh Nien cited the bureau deputy head Nguyen Xuan Duong as saying. “When an animal digests up to 2.5 parts per million (ppm) of melamine in one kilogram of feed, no trace of the chemical remains in its meat, eggs or milk,” Duong said. According to Duong, developed countries in Europe and the US have confirmed that such a ratio is safe for consumption “so we too should follow those guidelines.” The official decision was issued last Friday “to prevent stagnation in farming and production,” said Duong, noting that more than 7.5 million farming households across the country are at risk due to the recent melamine scare. A joint announcement made earlier by the Ministry of Health, World Health Organization (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organization had said that all melamine contaminated products should be recalled from the market. Several countries have absolutely banned melamine from food products, WHO officials in Vietnam said. But Duong said to demand zero-melamine products “would be unfair to producers and rupture their businesses” if small inconsequential amounts happened to leak from the production environment or packaging process. The melamine scandal, which originated in China, saw the chemical, mainly used to make plastics, being illegally doctored in food products to raise the protein content and cut back on raw materials. Under the ministry’s latest decision, importing, producing, trading and using animal feed that contains a melamine proportion higher than 2.5 milligrams per kilogram are prohibited. Duong also said his bureau is carrying out tests on different melamine amounts in feed to gauge the appropriate level of safety for people and animals, adding that results for the tests will be forthcoming in several months. The 2.5 ppm rate decision was issued in the wake of melamine being detected in October in fish meal imports from China to make animal feed. Deliveries of 240 tons of Chinese fish meal in June and July licensed by Chinese authorities contained a melamine concentration ranging from 0.59-2.24 percent, according to the HCMC Bureau of Quality Management and Fishery Resources Protection. Following the melamine scare for milk products in Vietnam in late September, the Ministry of Health on October 7 reassured consumers that all tainted products have been removed from the market. However, the ministry decided not to publicly announce the permissible level of melamine content and simply encouraged consumers to buy products that have passed quality tests. Source: TN, Agencies