Health Ministry of Vietnam recently promulgated a regulation asking doctors and health workers to carefully preserve and transport suspected bird flu virus samples to major laboratories for testing and other researches.

The Health Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien signed a document this week, which stated that 揾ealth prevention medical centers and hospitals in provinces and cities had the responsibility to extract H5N1-suspected medical samples and send them as soon as possible to the Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi or the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City.

Ms. Chien underlined that the results of bird flu tests would mainly depend on the quality and preservation of samples prior to the tests. Thus, medical staff is encouraged to collect samples in the first three days of a suspect´s possible date of contraction for more accurate results.

The regulation also required medical samples to be carefully packaged and transported by road or air to the specific laboratories as soon as possible.

Medical samples that are not sent within 72 hours must be kept at temperatures of -200 to -700 Celcius degrees, according to the regulation.