Battle Against Bird Flu

// video added January 19, 2006 // 2 comments // // Embed video:
lauraling

more from On Current TV:

Laura Ling looks at the battle against bird flu in Vietnam and how poor poultry farmers are dealing with having to kill their chickens.
  1. groups:
    On Current TV,   Intro,   Best of TV US,   News Current,   5 more
  2. tags:
    On Current TV,  Intro,  News Current,  Vietnam,  5 more
  3. credits:
    lauraling Starring, lauraling Correspondent, Mike Horn Editor

2 comments // Battle Against Bird Flu // Video

  • cattheawesome
  • MitchKoss
    • 0
      MitchKoss  

    • Is Moby Dick, commonly ranked as one of the two greatest classics of 19th Century American literature, a story about Man's Fate, or a story about harpoons? Sometimes being able to determine what the question is changes what the world looks like. When Laura Ling and I went to Vietnam to cover the battle against Avian Flu, the key to understanding the dynamic didn't seem to turn on the number of unvaccinated chickens that we could find to stand in the midst of. [Although we stood in the middle of a lot of them.] Rather, the key to understanding the progress that Vietnam was making, or not making, against Avian Flu seemed to turn on transparency--how honest the government was being about the problem, and how much information they were willing to share with the public, and with international health authorities... Because of the economic damage and world approbrium that followed the SARS outbreak in China in 2003--an outbreak that the government first tried to cover-up--the Chinese government was obliged to become much more transparent in dealing with a range of issues... And, when Laura and I go to Vietnam, that lesson did not seem to have been lost on the Vietnamese government, though it also is a Communist dictatorship. Put another way, you can try to hide something like official corruption from your people and the world, but you can't hide the spread of viruses and microbes... at least not for long. So finally, the Battle Against Bird Flu seemed to us to be the story of a struggle not just against sick poultry, but for more honesty in governance.

    • 2 years ago
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