January 26, 2004

 

 

Thailand Reports First Human Bird Flu Casualty

 

Thailand reported its first human casualty from the bird flu epidemic currently ravaging the region.

 

"A child from Kanchanaburi [province] who was being treated at hospital in Bangkok died last night. Once he was infected his condition worsened very quickly," said Nitaya Janleungmahaphon, spokeswoman for the Public Health ministry.

 

The death brings to seven the number of people who have died from avian flu. Six people in Vietnam died after suffering confirmed cases of bird flu. A 56-year-old chicken farmer in Thailand is also suspected to have died from the disease but officials are awaiting test results to confirm the exact cause of death. The epidemic currently affects Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia.

 

On Sunday the Thai government sent soldiers and prisoners to slaughter millions of chickens, as it struggled to control the damage caused by its belated admission that its poultry industry had been hit by the bird flu.

 

Confronting allegations that the government had covered up the illness sweeping Thai poultry farms for months, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra acknowledged that officials had suspected the bird flu outbreak for weeks - but said they wanted to avoid public panic in the absence of hard evidence.

 

"I couldn't have said it was bird flu as long as lab results didn't come out," the premier said in his weekly radio address. "I didn't want to create panic."

 

Thailand, the world's fourth-largest poultry exporter, has invited senior Asian health and agricultural officials and representatives from international agencies to discuss how to stop the spread of the epidemic.

 

At the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, Bangkok is likely to be heavily criticised for its role in allowing the deadly disease to spread.

 

International food safety experts say the test to determine whether chickens are infected with the H5N1 virus, which causes bird flu, takes less than a day, undermining Bangkok's claims that it had no proof of the virus.

 

"The government's efforts to sweep the problem under the carpet have exploded in its face, leaving the poultry industry in tatters and the very safety of the public in jeopardy," the Bangkok Post newspaper said in a weekend editorial.

 

The World Health Organization on Saturday confirmed that a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy who died on Thursday was the sixth confirmed bird flu casualty in the country. An 8-year-old girl who had tested positive for the virus is also critically ill.

 

The WHO has expressed deep concern about the threat posed by the bird flu, calling the extent of its current simultaneous spread "historically unprecedented."

 

While the disease - usually confined only to fowl - has so far only infected people in direct contact with chickens, health experts fear that the virus could mutate into a form that could be transmitted through human contact, potentially creating a deadly pandemic that could kill millions of people.

 

"The opportunity for the virus to reform itself into something even more aggressive and dangerous to humans has most likely never been higher," Robert Dietz, a WHO spokesman in Hanoi said yesterday.

 

The WHO also warned that those people carrying out the mass cull of chickens in Thailand were at risk of infection unless they wore protective clothing, including respiratory masks.