Travel warning from the U.S State Department

[giatugiatu]

Travel Warning
United States Department of State
Bureau of Consular Affairs
Washington, DC 20520


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This information is current as of today, Sun Mar 23 09:34:05 2003.
VIETNAM
March 22, 2003

This Travel Warning is being issued to alert U.S. citizens that the Department of State has authorized the departure, on a voluntary basis, of family members at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and the Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City. Due to health concerns in Vietnam regarding the presence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the lack of adequate medical care and facilities, as well as non-availability of commercial means of medical evacuation for SARS patients, the Department of State warns U.S. citizens to defer non-emergency travel to Vietnam at this time. U.S. citizens in Vietnam should consider departing. This Travel Warning supersedes the Public Announcement of March 21, 2003.

On March 22, 2003, the Department of State authorized the departure of family members, on a voluntary basis, at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and the Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City. These facilities remain open to provide the full range of services to American citizens and the general public.

Because of reduced availability of adequate medical facilities, the Department of State has suspended official travel to Vietnam until further notice. The level of medical services in Hanoi is now dramatically diminished by the closure of the only adequate hospital facility and reduced operations by the two main outpatient facilities due to the SARS emergency. At present, no commercial carriers are willing to transport patients with SARS. Even non-lethal medical conditions are difficult to address because clinics are making initial assessments by phone or screening patients outside the clinic facilities. On March 21, 2003, the Department of State imposed restrictions on official travel to Vietnam. The Department recommends that American citizens defer all non-emergency travel to Vietnam, especially if traveling with young children, until medical services have returned to normal.

The Consular Section of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi is located at 6 Ngoc Khanh, Ba Dinh District, telephone number (84-4) 831-4590; after hours emergency telephone number (84-4) 772-1500; fax (84-4) 831-4578. Additional information may be found on the Embassy website at http://usembassy.state.gov/vietnam/.

The U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City is located at 4 Le Duan, District 1, telephone (84-8) 822-9433; fax (84-8) 822-9434; website http://www.uscongenhcmc.org.

For the most up-to-date information regarding SARS, American citizens are advised to monitor the website of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at http://www.cdc.gov and the website of the World Health Organization at http://www.who.int.

For further information on travel to Vietnam, U.S. citizens should also consult the Department of State’s Consular Information Sheet for Vietnam, and the Fact Sheet on SARS which are located at http://www.travel.state.gov.

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[Vinh Le]

thanks for the warning

[nhung]

Thank You giatugiatu.

[giatugiatu]

You're welcome!:)

[hbpn]

Top News


Illness -- and its trackers -- know no boundaries

Health officials tackle disease from Asia with new technology


Sunday, March 30, 2003


BY KITTA MacPHERSON
Star-Ledger Staff

Eddy Bresnitz learned of the most recent worldwide outbreak of an emerging infectious disease when his BlackBerry buzzed at his hip.

It was a Saturday evening, March 15th, a quarter to nine. Seated at his kitchen table in his Lawrenceville home, Bresnitz, one of New Jersey's top public health officials, whipped the pocket computer from his side and scanned an ominous e-mail message. A worldwide alert had been issued by a U.N. agency, warning of a disease that started in Asia and had spread beyond.


By morning, Bresnitz, the state's epidemiologist, and other health authorities had alerted a wide array of hospitals, physicians, and public health officers through a sophisticated electronics network established for this very purpose.

They were ready this time.

Geared up for bioterror, their skills honed by recent investigations into outbreaks like West Nile virus, disease detectives working to stop the spread of the mysterious illness were prepared like never before.

"When the bell went off, everybody who had some reason to be involved in this collaborated and cooperated," Bresnitz said.

The quest to identify and contain the mysterious ailment, called severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, is far from over.

But over the past two weeks, since authorities at the U.N.'s World Health Organization sounded the alarm, scientists have come up with what they believe is the agent of infection -- a cousin of the virus that causes the common cold -- and have tracked the movements of those felled by the ailment in an effort to contain its advance. They have isolated antibodies produced by the virus which could be used for diagnostic kits in the future.

That's lightning speed, scientists say, compared with disease investigations of the past. Federal scientists seeking the cause of a disease outbreak among war veterans meeting in a Philadelphia hotel in 1976 took a year to identify the bacterium at the root of the illness.

"The technology was not as sophisticated as it is now," said David Perlin, chief scientist of the Public Health Research Institute in Newark, where researchers employ state-of-the-art equipment to stem the spread of diseases like drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. "Today, we can resolve these things much more quickly."

Keeping tabs on scientific information, such as the identity of the virus, its virulence and tendency to spread among those in close contact, is crucial since no one knows how long the current outbreak will last.

The disease, which officials believe first erupted in the Guangdong Province of China in November, has killed more than 50 people and infected more than 1,500, most of them in Southeast Asia. To put the numbers in context, more than 36,000 people on average die in the United States from the flu each year.

The first doctor to realize that the world was dealing with an unfamiliar disease died of the illness in Thailand yesterday. Italian physician Carlo Urbani, 46, a World Health Organization expert on communicable diseases, became infected while working in Vietnam, where he diagnosed an American businessman hospitalized in Hanoi, Vietnam, the U.N. agency said. The businessman later died.

In the United States, there are 62 suspected SARS cases, including one in New Jersey. No deaths have been reported. All patients either traveled through Asia, were relatives of those who did, or cared for them in hospitals. Three people in Toronto have died from SARS.

The symptoms include fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, coughing, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. There is no treatment for SARS. Scientists believe, based on growing genetic evidence, that the disease is caused by a new form of coronavirus, a major cause of respiratory infections.

Underpinning the work of disease detectives on the case are new technologies that have revolutionized medical research: DNA probes for rapid identification of families of bacteria and viruses; computer-driven X-ray crystallography to decipher the structures of molecules; rapid-fire polymerase chain reactions which quickly amplify DNA fragments for detection and identification.

The Internet, also, has transformed how disease detectives communicate with each other, scientists said.

Constant, easy communication means that many laboratories can work as one. In this case, 12 teams of scientists have been working under the aegis of the U.N., including researchers at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Rivalries, worries about primacy over publishing and other hallmarks of the scientific mindset, have largely been put aside, researchers said.

"When you are a disease detective, you go down a lot of blind alleys," said Bresnitz, the state epidemiologist. "It's clear that, when you have a lot of people, you can still do that and make headway."

The Internet has been equally beneficial on the local end.

In 1999, Bresnitz was paged while he was out with friends at a restaurant, only to learn of an outbreak of encephalitis in New York. As his friends ate, it took him another hour of phone work before he was able to determine the scope and severity of the illnesses.

With the recent SARS outbreak, he was able to turn quickly to the Internet to gather more information. After conferring with Clifton Lacy, the state Health Commissioner, and others, Bresnitz issued a statewide alert the following morning.

He used a relatively new computer network called NJ LINCS, the local information network and communication system, which connects the state health department with local public health departments and hospitals to relay and receive information quickly.

Officials at an unidentified hospital in northern New Jersey were responding to the LINCS bulletin when they reported that they had recently treated and released a 36-year-old female with symptoms sounding similar to SARS. She had also been traveling in Asia before she became severely ill.

Like other cases in the U.S., the patient is suspected of having had SARS. But without a diagnostic test, scientists cannot be more definitive. The woman has recovered. Family members who accompanied her to Asia as well as hospital workers who treated her have shown no signs of the respiratory illness, according to the state health department.

Security concerns since Sept. 11, 2001, and an anthrax scare shortly after have placed many scientists on watch for bioterror incidents. Since that time there has been an increase in public health spending. There has been no link established between SARS and terrorists, according to the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control.

Infectious disease experts, however, have been in a state of readiness, awaiting the emergence of the next flu pandemic. The last one occurred from 1918 to 1919 and killed 20 million people. Many scientists believe the arrival of the next big one is overdue.

If SARS had been a form of influenza, hundreds of thousands of people would already be dead, according to Robert Wallis, chief of infectious diseases at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.

Standing watch for the advent of new disease bugs, he said, is well-advised. In nature, he said, viruses are always mutating. Microbes are forever seeking new ecological niches.

Sometimes, as in the case of AIDS and Asian flus, deadly viruses jump species, often from monkeys, chickens or pigs, to humans, wreaking new forms of havoc.

With the rise in international travel, people are transporting illnesses from half a world away, as in the case of SARS, or, in an earlier era, smallpox and tuberculosis. Or people are moving to new places, Wallis said, where they have not developed a genetic protection to endemic diseases, like malaria.

"Now, when something happens, it can happen in a really big way," said Wallis. "Otherwise, with SARS, it might have been an outbreak among some farmers in China."
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1049026987217100.xml