HANOI, Jan. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Vietnam has produced bird flu vaccines by itself, and is using the first 300 doses to vaccinate fowls on a trial basis, local newspaper Labor on Tuesday quoted the country's Veterinary Institute as saying.

    Results of the trial will come out in the next few days, the report said, giving no further details about the "Made-in-Vietnam" vaccines.

    Vietnam, which has vaccinated 245.3 million poultry turns (each dose for a fowl being considered one turn, two doses for the same fowl regarded as two turns) since August 2005, will continue the vaccination this year, the Department of Animal Health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development announced Monday.

    After being vaccinated against bird flu viruses, chickens and ducks in Vietnam have gained the anti-disease rates of 86.25 percent and 82.59 percent, respectively.

    The department said on Jan. 9 that 21 cities and provinces nationwide, which have been hit by bird flu since early October 2005, have detected no new outbreaks for at least three weeks, meeting criteria to declare their territory free of the disease.

    In late November 2005, the department's director Bui Quang Anh told Xinhua Vietnam had set aside state money of 60 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 3.8 million U.S. dollars) for import vaccines. By that time, Vietnam had purchased 340 million doses of bird flu vaccines from China, and 6 million doses from the Netherlands and France each.

    He said in the November two local enterprises were expected to manufacture bird flu vaccines according to a technology developed by Vietnam's Biotechnology Institute with foreign help. Enditem