Bird flu kills 5-year-old Thai boy

By Panarat Thepgumpanat and Kanokwan Boonngok

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Bird flu has killed a 5-year-old Thai
boy, Asia’s 70th victim of the deadly virus, top health
officials said on Friday.

“The boy was infected with the H5N1 virus,” Deputy Health
Minister Anutin Charnvirakula told Reuters.

The death of the boy from the central province of Nakhon
Nayok, 110 km (70 miles) from Bangkok, took Thailand’s bird flu
death toll to 14 out of 22 known cases since the virus swept
through large parts of Asia in late 2003.

He was the second Thai killed by the H5N1 virus since bird
flu erupted anew in the country in October, when a 48-year-old
man died of it.

It was not yet certain how the boy caught the virus, which
usually strikes those in close contact with infected fowl or
their droppings, senior health officials said.

The boy, who died in hospital on Wednesday, was not known
to have had direct contact with chickens, they told a news
conference.

But Thawat Suntrajarn, head of the Health Ministry’s
Disease Control Department, said chickens had died in the
neighborhood and the boy had played unsupervised in the front
yard of his home.

“We believe that the boy contracted the virus from his
surroundings because, although his family does not raise
chickens, there are chicken raised in his neighborhood,” he
said.

That would follow the usual pattern of human infections of
the virus, which has not yet shown signs of evolving into a
form which could pass easily from person to person.

Experts say that is the great fear. If the H5N1 virus did
acquire that ability, it could set off a pandemic which could
kill millions of people without immunity to the new strain.

In the two years since the virus began to spread widely in
Asia, there has been only one case in Thailand in which H5N1 is
suspected of moving from person to person — that of a mother
who died after cradling her dying daughter all night.

But the World Health Organization says the virus is now
endemic in parts of Asia and countries around the world are
preparing plans to deal with a pandemic which could cause
serious economic losses as well as widespread deaths.

On Thursday, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist cited a
new study by the Congressional Budget Office as saying a human
outbreak of bird flu could cost $675 billion in economic damage
in the United States alone.

Since the start of October, 10 of Thailand’s 76 provinces,
mainly in central areas, have had outbreaks.

But Vietnam has been the worst hit with 42 deaths from 93
known cases and is still reporting fresh outbreaks despite a
major government effort to eradicate the virus.