Bird flu outbreak in Thailand
2004-07-07 07:42
Bangkok - The Thai government on Wednesday confirmed a fresh outbreak of bird flu two weeks after chickens started dying at a farm in central Thailand.
Officials culled the surviving chickens at the farm in the central Ayutthaya province where some 7 000 of 44 000 birds had died in the last two weeks from disease.
"The test result was positive (for bird flu) and we have culled all the chickens since last night and deployed officials to control the area," said Newin Chidchob, the deputy agriculture minister.
Newin said officials had also culled another 800 chickens in the neighbouring province of Pathum Thani where 70 had died from suspected bird flu and he admitted the outbreak could spread to other provinces.
"It is likely that the outbreak could spread similarly to the previous time but I don't think that the scale of the outbreak would be as severe as last time," he said.
The authorities in Thailand had been heavily criticised for failing to issue an early warning about the emergence of bird flu that devastated the billion-dollar Thai poultry industry earlier this year and infected 12 people, killing eight.
Critics accused the government of protecting some of the country's huge producers despite the threat to human health, and fresh claims of a cover-up have emerged over the latest cases.
The authorities said they had told the World Organisation for Animal Health about the chicken deaths on Saturday but not the Thai people because the case had not been confirmed.
"We did not inform the public about the new outbreak because we assumed that Thai people no longer care about the re-emergence of bird flu which has become an ordinary incident here," Yukol Limlaemthong, director-general of the country's livestock department, was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post.
The poultry farmer in Ayutthaya, Veera Sripramong, said he discovered some of his birds were developing the symptoms of bird flu two weeks ago. Another 8 000 birds had been culled at another of his farms.
The EU last week extended a ban on importing fresh chickens from Thailand and nine other Asian nations from August to December to protect itself against any possible spread of bird flu.
Thailand's last confirmed case was in May in the northern city of Chiang Mai that officials said may have been accidentally triggered by research on the disease.
Thailand had planned several times to declare itself free of bird flu following the initial wave of outbreaks in January but fresh cases scuppered the plans.