Double dengue fever trouble in Can Tho

The number of dengue fever cases reported in Can Tho City in the first three months of this year has doubled compared to the same period last year, a health agency said Monday.

Two hundred cases have been reported so far in 2009 in the Mekong Delta city with the downtown district of Ninh Kieu worst affected with 74 cases, followed by 31 cases in Binh Thuy District. There have been no deaths, but Dr. Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha, deputy director of Can Tho Preventive Health Center, said the increase of dengue fever in the dry season is unusual. Reported by Quang Minh Nhat

Unhygienic water producers ignore suspension

A pedestrian walks by a pushcart selling bottled water in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. Bottled drinking water from producers suspended for health safety violations was still being sold on the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City - some contaminated with dangerous bacteria.

A Sunday report by Tuoi Tre newspaper showed a large number of companies that had been suspended from producing and selling water by the city’s Health Department were still supplying water to customers. The HCMC Health Department inspected 57 of 326 bottled water producers between February 16 and March 28. The department suspended 29 producers for violating regulations on safety and hygiene, 11 of which had produced water contaminated with bacteria. SUSPENDED BOTTLED WATER BRANDS Ho Chi Minh City: Aguavida of Thuan Huy Company; Golf of Tan Tan Duc Company; Aquaphar of Tam Dang Company; Blue of Van Tai Enterprise; Aquaran of Lien Phu Phat Company; Dowaco of Dong Xuan Company; Sanawa of Van Phat Company; 079 of producer Ha Van Van; Rivera of producer Nhu Hao; Demyr of The Xuong Company; Avid of Tran Thuan My Company. Hanoi: Quang Tuan producer, Gia Binh Company, A&B Vietnam Company and an unnamed producer on Phuong Khoang Street in Tu Liem District. Inspectors said they even found some products containing Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, which can cause dangerous infections and sepsis in humans. An employee of Tran Thuan My Company in District 10 said the firm was still selling 18.9 liter bottles of water. The company had been suspended last week after inspectors had found their Avid brand products were contaminated with bacteria. The staff member said the products they were selling were from a different batch and had contacted customers to inform them not to use the contaminated bottles. However, an Avid bottle from the contaminated batch was still being used by a company in its office on Ba Hat Street, 100 meters away from the Tran Thuan My office. The company said it had not been contacted about the contaminated bottle. The The Xuong Company in District 8 makes the Demyr bottled water brand that was suspended last week. On Saturday, they said large quantities of 21-liter bottles were still available for VND7,500 (US$0.42) apiece. Thuan Huy Company in District 1 was also found selling its Aguavida bottled water although it had been suspended since March 3. Tam Dang Company - suspended since March 3 - said on Saturday they could distribute their Aquaphar bottled water with a promise to present a certificate of safety and hygiene they had acquired this month. Blue bottled water produced by Van Tai Company in District 6, suspended last Tuesday, was also being sold on Kinh Duong Vuong Street last Saturday. Too cheap to be good Le Nhu Ai, director of Saigon Pure Water Company (SAPUWA) said it was impossible to hygienically produce a 20-liter bottle to sell at the going price of VND7,500. Purified water must be sold for between VND1,000 (5.6 US cents) and VND1,500 (8.5 US cents) per liter to make a profit, he said. “Small-sized producers just take the bottles back and fill them from the pump to sell, but it normally takes more than VND20 billion ($1.12 million) to invest in a system to produce safe drinking water,” he said. He said small producers couldn’t afford to buy a water purifying system that entails filtering cations and anions, solid impurities and metal elements; treating odor and color; destroying bacteria under ultra-violet (UV), and ozone treatment. The workers also have to obey hygiene standards, he said. Strict measures Le Truong Giang, deputy director of the HCMC Health Department, said the suspended producers would face stricter penalties if they continued to make and sell their products. He also said local authorities and market watchdog agencies were responsible for inspecting and destroying all tainted water in the market. The department director, Nguyen Van Chau, said they would allow the breaching producers to resume production after inspections of their facilities showed they were safe. However, the official said it was difficult to manage all the producers, because the tests were time consuming. The department inspectors could only revoke certificates of safety and hygiene if customers were poisoned from their products, he said. Hanoi inspections Nguyen Viet Cuong, chief inspector of the Hanoi Health Department estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of all the 243 bottled water producers in Hanoi violated hygiene criteria, but the department had only suspended four producers during inspections conducted in the last three weeks. None of those were suspended for Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria contamination but their production facilities were “very dirty,” Cuong said. The capital’s Center for Preventive Health had found 10 from the total of 57 samples that were too alkali, the official said, adding that they banned the offending batches but had not suspended the factories. Source: TT, TN

Officials lack wherewithal to control food safety

An outdoor eatery on a sidewalk in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 1. The responsible authorities of Ho Chi Minh City are not equipped with the managerial and technical skills to tackle the food safety and hygiene problem in the city, officials admitted at a meeting on Thursday.

The meeting was called by the Culture-Society Board of the city People’s Council to discuss solutions to many food quality problems found during the board’s two-month study that ended the same day. The study revealed low percentages of health certified canteens for workers, students and patients and their minders at hospitals. Nguyen Van Minh, deputy head of the board, said “health officials keep calling on people to maintain food safety but food at their hospitals is not clean or safe.” Minh’s superior Nguyen Thi Bach Yen expressed doubts that mere certification can guarantee food’s safety. The Go Vap Market in the district of the same name boasts many certificates because food stall employees are not required to undergo check-ups, Yen said. The discussion heated up when the councilors mentioned several regulations that hinder health officials from blacklisting the sellers and producers of low quality food. Regulations allow the city’s Preventive Health Center to test producers and sellers but not to punish them if they violate safety or hygiene standards. The center, which is in charge of ensuring food safety and hygiene in the city, has to forward the case to the Health Department and instead of acting right away, the department would start inspections from the beginning. Also, fruit and vegetable vendors are not required to stop selling their produce while samples have been taken for testing. Sometimes, by the time the test results are out, the products might have been sold out. Officials from the city’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development also admitted they have not managed to keep track of all the kinds of pesticides that farmers are using to grow fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables contain four kinds of toxins: pesticides, microorganisms, heavy metals and nitrates, but the department officials do not have the capability to test for the last three substances. Although residents as well as officials are aware that various kinds of Chinese fruits are kept fresh using a toxic substance, both agriculture and health officials say they don’t know what chemical it is yet. Health officials have also failed to set out clear solutions on controlling street food, and have found it hard to check the quality of some 70-80 percent of the fruit imported from nearby provinces. Le Truong Giang, deputy head of the HCMC Health Department, said the department knows nothing of the quality of products like the herbal tea branded “Dr. Thanh” because it is produced and certified in Binh Duong Province. “I even don’t know if ‘Dr.’ stands for doctor,” Giang said. Another meeting on March 12 between councilors and health officials revealed that the latter had no explanation for more than half of 43 major food poisoning cases recorded over the past two years. City health officials have been using education and awareness as one of the prime tools to promote food safety and hygiene, but the measure has not worked very well so far. Councilor Tang Cam Vinh said many officials that he met during the two-month study “don’t know anything about food safety and hygiene. “When I mentioned the topic to several market management officials in districts 3 and Go Vap, they looked at me as though they had just fallen from the sky.” Deputy Nguyen Dang Nghia said reports on food safety and hygiene are made “carelessly only to prove that there are reports.” The city’s Health Department has spent a lot of money talking to the public about food safety and hygiene but has not studied people’s views on the topic, which would make communication more effective. Department official Huynh Le Thai Hoa apologized, saying that the department should have conducted a survey last year. More than 1,600 people in the city had suffered from severe food poisoning last year, the Preventive Health Center reported earlier this month. Mass food poisoning at local schools last year surged to seven incidents from two in 2007. Sixty-seven percent of the city’s bottled water plants and 61 percent of ice-making plants failed hygiene inspections last year. Also, 12 percent of the underground water used by the city locals last year didn’t meet safety standards. The figure was higher than that in 2007. The health department director Nguyen Van Chau told the meeting that “it won’t be easy to establish an order for food safety and hygiene in the city.” UNHEALTHY FOOD The Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA) has reported that only 185 of some 900 enterprises in the city have set up kitchens for their workers. Of these, 73 do not meet hygiene standards. HEPZA deputy head Lam Van Tiep said 40 to 50 of those firms provide their workers with meals valued at VND10,000 each. Others have been serving cheaper meals, many costing as low as VND5,000. Cheap meals are processed from poor-quality ingredients from unknown, sometimes illegal sources. Doctor Le Kim Hue from the city Nutrition Center said most workers have non-nutritious meals at home and at work, worsening their long term health prospects. “Malnourished female workers will give birth to malnourished children and that would be a big problem for society.” Doctor Tran Van Ky from the Vietnam Association of Food Science and Technology said “poor-quality meals cannot keep the workers healthy for long.” Source: TN, Agencies

Students hospitalized after food poisoning

Twenty-two students in the central province of Khanh Hoa were admitted to hospital Thursday afternoon for food poisoning after they ate take-away food on their camping trip.

Dr. Vinh Tuan Quang of Dien Khanh District Hospital said the students of Hoang Hoa Tham High School were taken to hospital suffering from nausea, diarrhea and low blood pressure. One of them was in critical condition on a respirator. Last night the students were still at the hospital under observation. Reported by Van Ky

Ho Chi Minh City chokes on traffic pollution

Xo Viet Nghe Tinh Street in Binh Thanh District is typical of the packed streets in Ho Chi Minh City these days. A face mask is not enough to protect residents of a city tormented by ever-worsening air pollution.

It is around two in the afternoon at the Bay Hien intersection in Tan Binh District, Ho Chi Minh City. Most of the motorcyclists are wearing masks; not only women but men too are covering their nose and mouth with a small cloth. “I don’t like covering my face when I’m out in the street,” said Nguyen Van Chau, who was stopping by a tobacco pushcart to buy a mask. “But I must as it is uncomfortable to breathe otherwise.” Like Chau, most of the city’s residents find the dirty air inconvenient, or worse. For officials and experts, it is a critical threat to human health. In fact, the HCMC Environmental Protection Agency has begun publicizing the readings from its monitoring stations to keep the public alert to the danger. In the last three months, air quality monitoring stations at six major intersections have recorded an average dust concentration of 0.37 to 0.68 milligrams per cubic meter, which is 1.5 to 2.5 times higher than the level deemed safe. On the section of road between Rach Chiec Bridge and Thu Duc Junction on the Hanoi Highway, the daily average is always five to six times higher than the safe limit. But it’s An Suong crossroads in District 12 that tops the black list for the worst dust and gas pollution because of its close proximity to belching industrial parks and export processing zones. Other hot spots are the intersections along Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Street, where the dust concentration is three to six times too high. Ho Nghia Dung, who lives on Nam Ky Khoi Nghia, made a complaint that is all too common these days. “Now we have to keep the door closed twenty-four-seven, so we no longer sit out front and chat in the afternoon.” Nitrogen dioxide is one of the worst air pollutants, and regularly has a concentration two to three times above the safe standard, rising as high as six times above during traffic jams. Highly toxic carbon monoxide is also on the increase, as is lead, which has a concentration of 0.22 to 0.38 micrograms per cubic meter, or up to 1.5 times higher than in the last months of 2008. The chronic presence of these contaminants in the air can cause acute pneumonia and bronchitis, and even speed up aging, according to health department officials. Dirty vehicles Ineffective exhaust systems and heavier traffic are the main culprits behind the air pollution, and they are only made worse by the narrow streets and constant road work. Toxic gases from motorbikes account for up to 70 percent of air pollution in large cities, said Nguyen Huu Tri, head of the Mechanized Vehicles Verification Department of the Vietnam Register. Tri singled out benzene and sulfur dioxide for special mention. According to the HCMC Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the contribution of motorbikes to air pollution in HCMC is more in the order of 80 percent. Ngo Ngoc Son from the Vietnam Register said overloading and frequent stopping were hard on vehicle engines and thereby made the emissions dirtier. “In those conditions, exhaust often contains more impurities than when vehicles run normally,” Son explained, adding that the difference could be seen in the black smoke from the exhaust when a stopped vehicle started moving again. At a meeting last week, the HCMC Safety Transport Committee reported that, in the first two months of this year, city motorists were stuck in nine traffic jams lasting more than 30 minutes. The numbers keep on climbing. Last year, 48 traffic jams lasting more than half an hour were recorded, increasing by 19 as against the previous year, the committee said. Not to mention that most vehicles, be they trucks, buses, cars or motorbikes, usually run well below their design capacity in heavy traffic, so their fuel is not burned completely. The upshot is more toxic gases like the dioxides of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, Son said. Because of the dense traffic, vehicles are moving along at under five kilometers per hour on average, compared to 10 kilometers per hour more than a year before. The rise in the number of vehicles can only be described as drastic. Every day, according to the committee, a hundred cars and more than a thousand motorbikes are registered in the city. In fact, there are nearly four million motorcycles with city registration plates, to which can be added the unknown number of unregistered motorbikes and the ones from other provinces, the transport department said. The streets as they are cannot possibly handle such a burden, said Vo Van Nhuan, the city’s top traffic policeman and overseer of traffic on 3,100 streets with a combined length exceeding 3,000 kilometers. To pile misery on misery, there are now 100 kilometers of barriers for road work and the transport department just keeps adding more. The effect of these obstacles is that traffic becomes tighter and slows to a crawl at best, thereby worsening the air pollution to a state almost beyond critical. Source: Agencies

Mistake found in US vaccine instructions

A US-owned pharmaceutical company has labeled a batch of measles, mumps and Rubella vaccine with incorrect instructions for use, said the Drug Administration of Vietnam (DAV).

The labeling on the MMRII vaccine wrongly says the drug is to be “injected into muscles” instead of “injected under skin,” the administration said in a statement sent to health departments nationwide. Experts said the mistake was critical. The mistake was found on a batch produced on August 28, 2008 and imported to Vietnam on February 11, 2009, the Ministry of Health’s agency said. The drug administration also directed departments and agencies under the ministry to notify all related organizations, including preventive health centers, so that they can properly use the vaccine, produced by Merck Sharpe & Dohme. Headquartered in New Jersey, Merck Sharp & Dohme, or Merck & Co., Inc., is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. It has set up a branch in Vietnam known as Merck Sharp & Dohme Asia Ltd. Source: SGGP

Mislabeled vaccine instructions not serious: US manufacturer

A Merck Sharp & Dohme Asia representative said the misprinting of erroneous instructions on the firm’s vaccines imported to Vietnam was not a serious incident.

The US-owned pharmaceutical company defended itself during a meeting with the Ho Chi Minh City Health Department on Tuesday after it had announced early this month that the instructions printed on a batch of its measles, mumps and Rubella vaccines were incorrect. The directions instructed doctors to inject the drug into muscles rather than underneath the skin as standard procedure prescribes. The mislabeled vaccines were imported in February. Following the announcement of the mislabeling, Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) issued another statement last Friday saying tests had showed that the risks of using its MMRII vaccine according to the mislabeled instructions were very few and unclear. The statement prompted the HCMC Health Department deputy director Pham Khanh Phong Lan to call an emergency meeting with the company on Tuesday afternoon. Lan said the statement from the company was unacceptable. A doctor from the Pasteur Institute in HCMC said it was necessary to provide exact and accurate instructions on all products, particularly those as sensitive as vaccines, which are often prone to complications. The doctor wished to remain anonymous. At the meeting, MSD Asia representative Alycia Draper refused to answer the department’s questions about how much vaccine had already been distributed. She said she needed permission from company leadership before speaking with authorities and the press. Merck Sharp & Dohme Asia Ltd. is a branch of Merck Sharp & Dohme in New Jersey, US. Source: SGGP