July 31, 2006

 

Thai authorities on bird flu alert
 

 

Thai authorities are on high alert for a possible re-emergence of bird flu after the nation confirmed the first death from bird flu in one and a half years last week.

 

Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin has ordered officials in the city to monitor all signs of a re-emergence of the disease. Bangkok has 24 modern poultry farms with some 1.1 million birds.

 

He said city officials would coordinate closely with the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives to prevent a new outbreak in Bangkok.

 

Meanwhile, over 300,000 laying hens in Thailand's north-east Nakhon Phanom province bordering Laos were culled after bird flu was confirmed in the province, according to Deputy Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Adisorn Piengkes.

 

The laboratory tests conducted on over 2,000 layers which died found that the fowl were infected with H5N1 virus. More than 300,000 chickens in 78 farms were slaughtered, Adisorn said.

 

Movement of poultry into and out of the province has been halted and closer monitoring for bird flu was ordered for nearby border provinces, the minister said.

 

Thai authorities would be visiting Laos for talks on joint co-operation against bird flu outbreaks across the border this week. Laos has reported bird flu outbreaks on its side of the border as well.

 

Meanwhile, frozen chicken smuggled from Thailand were seized during two operations over the weekend in Thailand's southern neighbour Malaysia, which shares a strip of border with Thailand.

 

RM21,000 (US$5,730) worth of frozen smuggled chicken were seized, the Kelantan State Anti-Smuggling Unit's deputy commander, Assistant Superintendent Zulkifli Ahmad, said.

 

The frozen chicken was believed to be for distribution in Kelantan due to high demand from local buyers.

 

In related news, Thailand is pushing for the use of the drug Tamiflu in suspected cases rather than wait for lab results, a Thai official said on Friday (Jul 28).

 

The proposal would apply to seven provinces where the virus is endemic, said Thawat Suntrajarn, Director-General of Thailand's Department of Disease Control.

 

If a patient is found to have fever and there has been reports of unusual deaths of chickens in the area, the doctor should prescribe Tamiflu without waiting for lab results, Suntrajarn said. 

 

Tamiflu, produced by Roche Holding AG, is the most commonly used anti-bird flu drug.

 

A teenager who died in the northern province of Pichit last week was suspected of having dengue haemorrhagic fever and was not given Tamiflu, despite his close contact with poultry, officials said. The latest bird flu death was the 15th in Thailand since 2003.

 

Thailand was slow to respond to bird flu when it first started devastating poultry flocks in late 2003, badly hurting what was then the world's fourth largest chicken export industry.