Asia Steps Up Fight Against Bird Flu

Nations stepped up efforts to stem the spread of bird flu with bans on chicken imports from some affected countries, while the death toll rose to six in Vietnam, the country hardest hit by the virus.

The World Health Organization said Saturday that a 13-year-old-boy in Vietnam has died from the avian influenza virus and an 8-year-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition.

The two cases are the first confirmations of the H5N1 virus in people in southern Vietnam, where the bulk of the bird flu infections in poultry has been, raising the specter that more people could be infected by the disease now sweeping through Asia.

The other five deaths were from the northern region around Hanoi.

Thailand also reported one suspected death from avian influenza and at least two confirmed cases, making it the second nation where the illness has struck humans and not just chickens.

Asia is on a region-wide health alert, with governments slaughtering millions of chickens to contain the outbreak in six countries: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

The 15-nation European Union and Japan announced Friday that they had halted shipments of poultry from Thailand, one of the world’s top five chicken exporters.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thailand’s gross domestic product could slip by as much as 0.1 percent because of bans on Thai chicken imposed by Japan and the EU – the country’s biggest markets – along with many other countries.

“If they are going to stop buying, we have to deal with it,” Thaksin said, though he predicted the outbreak would be under control in about 30 days.

Thailand last year shipped nearly 500,000 tons of chicken, valued at $1.3 billion, according to the Thai Broilers Processing Exporters Association.

South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were also among countries banning poultry from Thailand. Other countries have imposed restrictions on imports from all nations reporting outbreaks in poultry.

Malaysia, in addition to banning imports from neighboring Thailand, deployed inspectors to test for the disease at local farms.

Scientists have reached no firm conclusions on why the flu is so contagious, but a leading theory is its adaptability. The WHO fears bird flu could combine with a human flu to create a dangerous mutant form.

Dr. Klaus Stohr, head of the U.N. agency’s influenza program, recommended Friday that people with bird flu be quarantined to avoid contact with people with regular influenza.

Stohr said, however, that he sees no need for the kind of travel warnings WHO issued during last year’s outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, a flu-like illness that killed nearly 800 people worldwide.

“We have to put things into perspective. There is a chance that something can go wrong but it looks if we act decisively now, then there still is a window of opportunity here to control the disease before it takes on global proportions.”

Killing chickens in affected countries is “the key to the solution of the whole problem,” Stohr added. “We do not have a problem of international spread by infected humans. We may have a problem of international spread by birds.”

Thailand’s government confirmed the disease was present in its poultry population. It also said tests showed two boys, one 6 and the other 7, have the virus and two other people are suspected of having it. One, a 56-year-old man who raised fighting cocks, died Friday, the government said.

Cambodia also confirmed its outbreak while Laos held an emergency meeting Friday to evaluate cases of dead poultry there.

Farmers in Thailand have been saying for more than a week that their chickens, like those in neighboring countries, were dying of bird flu. But until Friday, officials had maintained the chickens were suffering from fowl cholera – which they said posed no danger to people.

Thaksin, the prime minister denied the government tried to cover up the outbreak, saying officials had not been sure before test results were confirmed.

“If we came out and said this was it (bird flu) without the lab results, it would have caused even more panic,” he said in a weekly radio address.

The government announced it would host a meeting Jan. 28 of ministers from affected countries and international influenza experts.

On Saturday, about 600 Agriculture Ministry officials, wearing protective masks and gloves, were slaughtering chickens in Suphanburi, the hardest-hit province, 60 miles north of Bangkok, said Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob.

More than 7 million chickens have been killed since November, he said.

An influenza expert and media officer from the World Health Organization are due to arrive in Thailand late Monday to help cope with the outbreak, said Dr. Somchai Peerapakorn, the agency’s acting regional representative to Thailand.