Message: My wife, two teenaged daughters, and I are planning on visiting Vietnam next month (March '04). Does anyone have any meaningful feedback regarding avian flu we're hearing so much about? Suggestions; cautions; admonitions...any feedback will be appreciated.

Thus far, the avian flu has been transmitted from chickens to people, but there is not person to person transmission (which is what would make it dangerous for travelers). Transmission is via direct contact with live chickens or with chicken manure.

I'd suggest avoiding the live poultry markets.

Kepp up to date on the situation at www.cdc.gov/travel

As of now, no govt. agencies have issued any official travel warnings for any of the areas affected by bird flu.

However, my family was scheduled to travel to 3 cities in China in March and I just revised the plans yesterday to visit Tasmania instead. I'm not that worried about contracting bird flu. But at the rate the virus is spreading, particularly in China, there is a reasonable chance that travel advisories will be in place by the time we are ready to go. I don't want my travel plans disrupted at the last minute. We will try again for China next year.
If you are really keen to see VN, my suggestion would be to have a back-up plan, just in case the situation deteriorates.

I read that what's really keeping the WHO awake at night is the possibility that avian 'flu might infect a human who already has one of the existing strains of 'flu, in which case the two strains could conceivably exchange genetic information and produce a new and more virulent strain. That's what this scientific ignoramus understands, anyway. (It doesn't seem to have happened yet, so, fingers crossed.) hopefully won't.

The concern is that the avian flu could make the jump to not only infecting an occasional human, but could mutate so that it would be passed from person to person. This might happen in the scenerio Neil noted above. Human to human transmission would increase the spread of the flu exponentially. The current avain flu is quite virulent already. It isn't an increase in virulence that is feared, but the human to human transmission.

You may remember that there was an avian flu outbreak in Hong Kong several years ago. Millions of chichens were killed, all the poultry markets disinfected and the people who caught the avian flu were quarantined. The flu was contained and died out.

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