Bird flu has world in sweat

As a sixth victim died in Vietnam and two young boys were diagnosed with the disease in Thailand, world health officials warned the risk of the illness becoming transferable among humans would only increase unless tough measures were taken to stem its spread.

Officials from Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia and South Korea - all countries that have reported outbreaks, will be at the meeting in Bangkok on Wednesday, along with the Chinese and representatives from the European Union, Hong Kong and Singapore, which have all banned imports of Thai chicken.

Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday denied an apparent failure to come clean on the extent of the bird flu outbreak in his country despite numerous complaints from farmers about unexplained chicken deaths as far back as November.

In his weekly radio address yesterday, Shinawatra said the government had tried to look after the needs of the rural economy and the interests of farmers. "If we came out to say this was [bird flu] without the lab results, it would have caused even more panic," he insisted. And government spokesman Jakrapop Penkair said officials had suspected for "a few weeks" that bird flu had spread to Thailand but didn’t want to alarm the public. He said Thailand was doing everything it could to contain the outbreak and called on countries to pull together.

But World Health Organisation officials are increasingly concerned that the outbreak, which they have described as "historically unprecedented", could become worse than the Sars epidemic last year, which saw travel bans imposed around the world and 800 people die.

The human cost of bird flu mounted yesterday when Vietnam announced a 13-year-old boy had died on Thursday and an eight-year-old girl had tested positive for the virus in Ho Chi Minh City. They were the first confirmed cases of bird flu in south Vietnam since four children and one adult died in the north of the country.

In Thailand, a fighting cock breeder died in hospital of suspected bird flu on Friday, the first death there. Also in Thailand, two boys aged six and seven were confirmed on Friday as having the disease, and two other patients were listed as suspected cases. One of the boys reportedly fell sick three weeks ago after playing with a chicken carcass near his home.

Although several Asian countries have suffered serious outbreaks this year, Vietnam and Thailand are the only countries so far where humans have contracted avian flu.

Eating cooked chicken or eggs infected with the virus, which is spread by faeces and saliva, should pose no risk to humans, according to the World Health Organisation. But the danger is that the virus will mutate and attach itself to human flu.

"The more widespread it becomes, the greater the possibility that the virus could become altered and become more of a threat to the human population," said WHO spokesman Bob Dietz.

A mass chicken cull continued yesterday in farms around Thailand, as officials put the number killed at seven million.

Farmers have complained since November of a spate of unexplained chicken deaths that were initially linked to a cold spell and a bout of avian cholera. But while agriculture officials continued to say publicly that cholera was to blame, they were quietly ordering a mass cull of chickens in high-risk areas. Even though health experts recommend wearing protective clothing to dispose of infected fowl, Thai farmers have been ordered to cull chickens with little or no protection.

Experts say bird flu may have been spread to Thailand from Vietnam by migrating fowl that in turn infected chickens reared in factory farms. The district in central Thailand where the first avian infection was confirmed is known as a home for migratory ducks and geese.

After the cull was launched, rumours began to circulate of positive tests for bird flu on chicken samples. On January 15, a Thai consumer watchdog group raised the alarm, provoking furious denials from deputy agriculture minister Newin Chidchob.

"The rumour [of avian flu] may have been spread by our competitors who want to attack our poultry export industry," he said.

In a move reminiscent of Britain’s vain efforts to quell the BSE crisis, Thailand’s cabinet last week invited journalists to watch them tuck in to chicken for lunch. And a poultry industry group displayed similar bravado by promising to pay 14,000 to anyone in Thailand who died after eating chicken.

Until late last week, Thai chicken exporters had boasted that importers in Japan were paying higher prices because Thailand was still free of flu.

And on Monday, during a scheduled trip to Thailand, a senior European health official lent his full support to Thailand’s claims. "There is absolutely no evidence of the existence of bird flu in Thailand," said David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection.

However, much of the world turned on Thailand on Friday when Europe hurriedly slapped a ban on Thai chicken and eggs - a trade put at around 162,000 tons a year - a day after Japan did the same. Critics say the government’s cover-up has fanned the flames of an Asia-wide health crisis and forced tens of thousands of farmers to the wall.

Opposition politicians yesterday called for an independent inquiry into whether officials were culpable in hiding the outbreak and the risk posed to farming communities.

"We need to know how much was known and when, then we can take action," said Abhisit Vejjajiva, deputy leader of the Democrat party.

He said the party was considering a no-confidence vote. The ruling coalition has a large majority, though, and would probably defeat any motion.

In a stinging editorial yesterday, the Nation newspaper criticised the government’s attempt to stifle critics and also called for an independent inquiry to restore public trust.

"The government’s mishandling of the bird flu epidemic has given us a costly lesson - not just about people’s lives and economics but also about democracy," it said.