First Bird Flu death in Thailand

A six-year-old boy has become Thailand’s first confirmed fatality from the bird flu virus only days after admitting the preence of the virus which has infected another three people in the kingdom, Thai Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said.

A six-year-old boy has become Thailand’s first confirmed fatality from the bird flu virus only days after admitting the preence of the virus which has infected another three people in the kingdom, Thai Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said.”A child from Kanchanaburi (province) who was being treated at hospital in Bangkok died last night,” she said. “Once he was infected his condition worsened very quickly.”Ms Sudarat confirmed press reports that a 10-year-old girl and a 58-year-old woman in the western province of Suphan Buri were confirmed as having the disease. A seven-year-old boy from the same province was confirmed as infected last week. “The Health Ministry will release the exact number of infected people later this morning,” she said.”There are also some more suspicious cases.”Another man suspected of having bird flu died in hospital last Friday, but test results that would confirm whether he was infected with the disease have not yet been released. Suphan Buri and Kanchanaburi are the epicentre of the bird flu epidemic which has forced a cull of more than nine million chickens across 24 of Thailand’s 76 provinces. Ms Sudarat said the Government’s priority now was to enforce the chicken cull, a grisly task being carried out by hundreds of soldiers as well as Government crews. “What we can do now is control the spread in poultry,” she said.”When animals get infected it becomes difficult to control.”Amid accusations that a delay in announcing the presence of the deadly H5N1 virus in Thailand had meant the cull was carried out in an unsanitary and ineffective way, she said the Government would enforce strict standards. “Prevention measures are very important,” she said.”People who are dealing with poultry should wear gloves and prevention suits.”We urgently need to control the disease. The Government will use Ministry rules to take legal action against [those] who throw chicken carcasses into rivers.” Agriculture Minister Somsak Thepsutin said emergency measures enforced in Suphan Buri and Kanchanaburi, because of the presence of bird flu in chickens there, would later be extended to another eight provinces. Asia’s bird flu crisis deepened on Sunday as Indonesia said “millions” of its chickens had died from the illness, making it the seventh nation to confirm the deadly disease. Thailand will on Wednesday host international talks on the epidemic, which has spread to poultry in Cambodia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. Vietnam has reported six deaths from the disease but there have been no human casualties in the other countries.(Source: AFP, ABC Health News, Jan 2004)