Thai calls in troops against bird flu

Thai calls in troops against bird flu

Agencies, Bangkok

Thailand brought in troops and prisoners on Sunday to kill
millions of chickens and stop the spread of highly contagious
bird flu, which has jumped to humans in Vietnam and Thailand and
now spread to Indonesia.

With most people fearing contamination, 400 soldiers were
drafted to kill the hens in Suphan Buri province northwest of
Bangkok, Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchop told
reporters. A hundred prisoners were also brought in.

"We have had labor problems. It is difficult to find laborers
as after the bird flu outbreak was confirmed, many of them are
avoiding working on farms," Newin said.

All chickens in the province, a major area of production in a
Thai industry that raises a billion chickens a year and earns
US$1.5 billion in exports, will be killed.

Thailand kills the hens by tying them up in sacks and burying
them alive.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra tried to ease farmers fears
on Sunday, promising them compensation, help with starting up
again after the epidemic and a suspension of their debts.

China was the latest of many countries to ban Thai chicken
imports. Last year, Beijing was widely accused of covering up an
outbreak of the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that if bird flu
combines with human flu, a new strain could sweep through a human
population with no immunity to it in an epidemic worse than SARS.

The WHO calls the near-simultaneous outbreaks in Asia
"historically unprecedented".

Meanwhile, a WHO spokesman predicted on Sunday a vaccine for
the bird flu rampaging through Asia is more than six months away.

Recently WHO raised hopes that a prototype bird flu vaccine
would be ready in four weeks' time. But the UN health agency on
Sunday said on its Web site its fears that the virus would mutate
had come true, slowing up work on a vaccine.

"I don't think we're looking at a workable vaccine within six
months. That's too late for the influenza season in Asia but it
would be available," Peter Cordingley, the WHO spokesman for the
region, told The Associated Press in the Philippines.

Indonesia confirmed an outbreak of the disease that has
emerged in Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia and
Vietnam.

Jakarta said on Sunday about 4.7 million chickens had died in
the country since November, 60 percent from Newcastle disease,
harmless to humans, and 40 percent from a combination of that and
bird flu.

Six people have died in Vietnam and two human cases have been
confirmed in Thailand.

"There's no denying the disease is spreading," Anton Rychener,
Vietnam representative for the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization, told Reuters.

Vietnam's latest known human case was an eight-year-old girl
in the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City.

Children appear most at risk -- five of Vietnam's six dead and
both Thailand's cases were children -- but why is unclear. All
seem to have caught it from sick chickens.

Thaksin's government denies covering up bird flu by describing
the outbreak in November as poultry cholera, which cannot jump to
humans. The government said it knew for sure it was bird flu only
when tests confirmed it on Friday.

"The government never realized it was avian influenza before
yesterday, but it was suspecting that it might be," chief
government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said.

Thaksin told reporters the government took steps at the time
to combat bird flu, but announcing them could have caused panic.

Thailand has invited Asian health and agriculture officials
and international agencies to discuss bird flu on Wednesday.

Bangkok could come in for criticism at the session, Western
officials say, to match the fury of some newspapers and
opposition politicians.

The opposition Democrats, with an eye on a general election in
early 2005, have demanded his resignation. Thaksin has shrugged
off the calls.

"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 an editorial on Saturday.