Vietnam has completed procedures to import additional 150 million doses of vaccines against bird flu viruses among fowls, local newspaper People's Army on Thursday quoted a veterinary official as saying.

The vaccines will be used after Jan. 15, said Bui Quang Anh, director of the Department of Animal Health under Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. About 244.5 million poultry turns (each dose for a fowl being considered one turn, two doses for the same fowl regarded as two turns) have been vaccinated so far.

The country started to vaccinate poultry in August 2005. The department said on Jan. 9 that 21 cities and provinces nationwide, which have been hit by bird flu since early October 2005, have detected no new outbreaks for at least three weeks, meeting criteria to declare their territory free of the disease.

In late November 2005, Anh told Xinhua that Vietnam had set aside state money of 60 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 3.8 million U.S. dollars) for import vaccines. By that time, Vietnam had purchased 340 million doses of bird flu vaccines from China, and 6 million doses from the Netherlands and France each.

Source: Xinhua