Thailand Confirms More Bird Flu Cases

Thailand confirmed more outbreaks of deadly bird flu among chickens and wild ducks in provinces near Bangkok Tuesday.

Thailand confirmed more outbreaks of deadly bird flu among chickens and wild ducks in provinces near Bangkok Tuesday.”The H5N1 bird flu virus was found in wild ducks which live near Bangkok in Phathum Thani province,” Agriculture Minister Somsak Thepsuthin told reporters.”We are worried because wild ducks move freely all over the place, hence the virus could easily spread to more areas.”The virus has been found in the past few days on a chicken farm in north-central Nakhon Sawan province, farms in Phathum Thani province, north of Bangkok and on several farms in the northern provinces of Uttaradit and Sukothai.Last week, outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu virus were confirmed in two central provinces, ending Thai hopes that the avian flu outbreak which ravaged poultry farms across Asia earlier this year had been eradicated.Early this year, the H5N1 virus killed 24 people — 16 in Vietnam and 8 in Thailand — who had come into close contact with infected fowl.Thailand, then the world’s fourth biggest chicken exporter, said it culled around 60 million chickens and other poultry in that outbreak.China said last week it had culled thousands of chickens and vaccinated many more to try to halt an outbreak of H5N1.There have been no reports of anyone in China or Thailand falling ill from bird flu in the latest outbreaks and late last week, Chinese doctors released 37 people from observation after they had come into contact with infected chickens.LINK TO WILD BIRDSMigrating wild birds, especially waterfowl, were widely blamed for spreading the epidemic across much of Asia and forcing widespread culling. Yukol Limlaemthong, head of the Thai Agriculture Ministry’s Livestock Department, told reporters he feared more outbreaks.”There are still some more provinces that we suspect have bird flu because chickens in those areas have died with the symptoms we saw from the bird flu virus. We have sent samples for lab testing,” Yukol said.Those provinces, such as Khon Kaen, are in northeast Thailand, Yukol said.”Our assumption is that the bird flu virus is still on the ground. It might take years to get rid of it,” he said.Officials have yet to reveal the number of fowl culled in the latest outbreaks, but at least 30,000 have been killed.The government also said Tuesday it would not cull wild storks, as it had said it would, even though officials believe they carry the virus.”It is not an effective way to contain the bird flu virus,” Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang told reporters.Yukol also said officials had tracked down 5,000 chickens moved illegally moved from a farm in Nakhon Sawan province where bird flu had been confirmed.”Those chickens have been found cut in pieces and ready for further processing for export in one processing factory in Saraburi province,” he said.”We have ordered the factory to stop operations for seven days and destroy (stocks),” Yukol said.(Source: Reuters, July 2004)