Bird flu flares again in Asia

Bird flu flares again in Asia

Panarat Thepgumpanat, Reuters/Bangkok

Bird flu has killed a 48-year-old man in Thailand, the country's
first human death in a year, officials said on Thursday, as the
deadly H5N1 virus that has now hit Europe reared its head again
in east and southeast Asia.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told a news conference the
victim had slaughtered and eaten an infected bird in Kanchanaburi
province, which reported new outbreaks of avian influenza this
week in birds around 100 km west of the capital.

Eating well-cooked chicken meat is not considered by health
authorities to be a risk but contact with sick chickens or ducks
is a known method of transmission.

Health officials said several tests were needed before the man
could be confirmed as Thailand's 13th official victim.

"The first lab results came out negative but we tested it
several times and it confirmed it was positive," Thawat
Suntrajarn, director-general at the Department of Disease
Control, told Reuters.

He added that the victim's son, who had been in close contact
with chickens, had so far not tested positive for the H5N1 virus
which experts fear could mutate and "go human", unleashing a
global pandemic of killer flu.

Elsewhere in Asia, Vietnamese officials started culling again
in the Mekong Delta and Taiwan's Agriculture Council said it had
found infected birds in a container smuggled from China, the
first case on the island since late 2003.

Tests results confirmed that 1,000 birds in the Panama-
registered cargo seized by coastguards on Oct. 14 were infected
with H5N1, Chiang Hsien-Choung of the animal health and
inspection department said.

All the birds had been destroyed and there was little danger
of the virus spreading, he added.

The H5N1 strain, which first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997,
re-emerged in 2003 in South Korea and has spread to Russia and
Europe from southeast Asia, which the World Health Organization
says will be the most likely epicenter of any human pandemic.

It has killed over 60 people in Asia, including 41 in Vietnam,
the worst-hit country.

Most human deaths have been linked to contact with sick birds,
but experts say the virus could mutate at any time into a form
that is more easily transmitted from person to person.

After a relative lull in new human and bird cases, Vietnam has
reported its first outbreak in poultry since July.

"We have just slaughtered and buried all the 180 ducks after
tests showed they had the bird flu virus," said Nguyen Van Giam,
chairman of the People's Committee in Ninh Quoi A commune.

Vietnam has been vaccinating millions of poultry nationwide to
prevent outbreaks in its "winter" season -- which runs from
November to January -- when the virus appears to thrive.

In China, where there have so far been no human cases, the
Foreign Ministry confirmed H5N1 in 2,600 birds at a poultry farm
in Inner Mongolia, but said the outbreak had been wiped out
without spreading to people.

"As far as I know, there have been no cases of human
infection," spokesman Kong Quan told reporters.

Aphaluck Bhatiasevi of the World Health Organization in
Beijing told Reuters China had culled 91,100 birds, vaccinated
166,000 more, and imposed a 21-day quarantine on the affected
area and movement controls on poultry around the country.

With H5N1 continuing a westward march that has sparked
stockpiling of anti-flu treatments in Europe, Russia told the EU
on Wednesday it had found the virus in a region south of Moscow.

The same strain has also been discovered in Turkey and
Romania, although bird flu detected in a turkey on a Greek Aegean
island has yet to be confirmed as H5N1.

As Europe geared up its responses, Britain said it planned to
buy enough vaccine to protect the entire population in the event
of a pandemic, while Germany said it would confine all poultry to
pens to prevent contact with wild migratory birds believed by
some to carrying the virus from Asia.