Thai man dies of bird flu

2005-10-24 11:54

Bangkok - A Thai farmer died from bird flu after contact with infected poultry, taking the kingdom's death toll from the virus to 13, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Thursday.

"One man has died and the test result last night confirmed he had died of bird flu," Thaksin said at a weekly news conference. "The victim had contracted (the virus) from sick chicken."

Thaksin said Bang-on Benpad, 48, was a farmer who had killed and eaten sick chicken. The victim's son had been hospitalised in Bangkok, where he was undergoing tests to determine if he also had bird flu.

The deadly H5N1 strain of the virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, including 13 in Thailand, and was last week detected in Romania and Turkey, with new outbreaks also reported from Russia and China.

Scientists and health professionals fear H5N1 may mutate and acquire genes from the human flu virus that would make it highly infectious as well as lethal, possibly killing millions worldwide.

Thailand has taken steps to fight bird flu, requiring farmed birds to stay in enclosures and stepping up monitoring.

But the kingdom has struggled to completely eradicate the disease, which showed up last week in wild sparrows outside Bangkok.

- AFP