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If Vietnam can do it, then so can we

Culling and vaccination stopped bird flu. Britain should follow suit, says robert matthews

A ray of hope has just burst through the cloud that is the bird flu epidemic. Officials in Vietnam have turned to an age-old remedy for fighting off the lethal H5N1 virus, and the World Health Organisation says it appears to be working.

From being one of the first to suffer human fatalities from bird flu, Vietnam has become the first to become officially disease-free, with the death-toll unchanged at 42 since the beginning of the month. Experts are cautioning that the virus could still make a come-back, but even if it does, Vietnam will be ready with its patent cure for pandemics. It's the same remedy that rid the country of the barely less deadly Sars virus in a matter of weeks, at the cost of just five lives.

So what is it? Some brilliant insight into the nature of viral genetics, perhaps, or a breakthrough in understanding the human immune system? No: it's called digit extraction
Vietnam has learnt from Sars, when anyone looking a bit peaky was packed off to hospital

protocol. And the bad news for the UK is that no one in Whitehall can master it.

In 2003, faced with the Sars epidemic, officials in Vietnam rapidly instituted a regime under which anyone entering the country looking a bit peaky was packed off to an isolation hospital. The combination of close surveillance and rigid isolation stopped the epidemic dead.

With bird flu, they did the same, swiftly introducing a programme of surveillance, mass vaccination of birds and culling in the worst affected areas.

Meanwhile, over in the UK, ministers are clucking about cost and manpower - precisely the same issues that led to the disastrous delays over the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001. The only decision they have made is to reject mass vaccination - just as Vietnam shows its crucial role in stemming an epidemic.

Forget birds carrying H5N1; the real threat to the UK is ministers doing sweet FA.

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