The Vietnamese Health Ministry said it has approved a plan on vaccinating people on a trial basis using a foreign product in the 2008-2014 period, according to local newspaper Young People on Tuesday.

The trial will be conducted among 180 healthy people at different ages in southern An Giang province by the Ho Chi Minh City Pasteur Institute. It will use the ChimeriVax vaccine developed by Acambis, a leading vaccine company based in the United Kingdom.

The ChimeriVax vaccine has been tested in a number of foreign countries, and proved highly effective, the newspaper said.

Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 20, Vietnam detected 36,894 dengue fever patients, mainly those from the southern region, of whom 33 died of the disease, posting year-on-year declines of 24 percent and 30 percent, according to the ministry's latest statistics.

The ministry is asking residents in localities nationwide to keep on cleaning environment around their accommodations, including keeping water containers clean and killing mosquitoes, the disease's transmitter, and their larvae.

(Xinhua News Agency August 26, 2008)