Health

Asia Jittery Over Bird Flu

October 20, 2005 / 4:17 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Bird flu sent jitters across Asia on Thursday, with Thailand's prime minister confirming another fatality from the illness and Taiwan reporting the island's first incidence of the lethal virus.

A 48-year-old man who succumbed after handling his neighbor's sick chickens became the 13th person to die of the disease in Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said, citing new lab results confirming the diagnosis.

Meanwhile, Europe's top health officials meet Thursday for talks on how to thwart the spread of bird flu, as Prime Minister Tony Blair scheduled similar meetings with British politicians and the country's largest farmers' union.

The victim in Thailand was hospitalized with severe pneumonia on Sunday, about two weeks after he killed, cooked and ate his neighbor's sick chickens. Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes but were not tested for bird flu.

Most human cases have been linked to direct physical contact with sick birds. Health officials say it is not dangerous to eat properly cooked chicken. They urge standard hygiene practices be taken during preparation, such as thoroughly washing hands and surfaces in contact with raw meat.

In related developments:

A human pandemic of bird flu can be avoided, provided rich nations channel funds to poorer countries to help them report and contain the disease in birds, an official at the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health said. "In our opinion, the first line of defense is to mobilize resources and tackle the problem in the bird rather than focusing on anti-virals and vaccines," Alejandro Thiermann, head of the group's standard-setting committee for terrestrial animals, said Wednesday. He noted that it was still very rare for humans to become infected.

Europe's top health officials meet Thursday for talks on how to thwart the spread of bird flu, as Prime Minister Tony Blair scheduled similar meetings with British politicians and the country's largest farmers' union. Other countries across Europe were already slaughtering suspect birds. Veterinary officials killed poultry in a small village in central Russia on Thursday, and Germany ordered farmers to keep poultry indoors as a precaution. British farmers were taking similar measures. As EU ministers meet Thursday afternoon, Blair will hold private talks with British government ministers and the head of the National Farmers Union.

Authorities at Shanghai's two airports will start checking travelers' bags for animal products, the Shanghai Daily newspaper said as countries in the region step up vigilance against the disease.

Serbia on Thursday ordered that all poultry and pigs be kept indoors, and banned the sale of live birds to minimize the risk of bird flu spreading in Europe. The Agriculture Ministry said the measure was taken "to prevent contacts of poultry and pigs with wild birds." All animal feed must also be kept indoors, the ministry said. People are also barred from taking domestic fowl or pigs to open water, as well as to "live bird displays." The H5N1 strain of bird flu was found last week in neighboring Romania and in Turkey.

The Philippines announced new measures to keep the country free of bird flu. The country will host about 7,000 athletes and officials from 11 next month for the 23rd Southeast Asian Games. Health officials said thermal screening will be conducted at the airport in Manila, and athletes entering with a fever will be isolated and examined. The country has so far been free of the virus.

The World Health Organization also announced China had destroyed 91,100 birds near a farm in the country's north. The birds were slaughtered after 2,600 chickens and ducks died of the H5N1 virus in a breeding facility in a village in the Inner Mongolia region.

Taiwan on Thursday confirmed the island's first case of deadly bird flu. The Agricultural Council said birds smuggled in from China on a Panama-registered freighter tested positive for the H5N1 virus strain.

The man's 7-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, has been hospitalized in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection and is suspected of having bird flu, said Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control.

"The people in this area should have known better," he said. "They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous."

Also in Asia, Indonesia's health minister on Thursday expressed concern about the virus possibly mutating into a form that spreads easily from person to person.

Several of Indonesia's bird flu deaths, infections and suspected cases occurred within at least two separate families, Minister of Health Siti Fadillah Supari told reporters, adding that a third suspected cluster was under investigation.

"The more we find clusters of human bird flu cases, the bigger the possibility of human-to-human infection," Supari said.

So far most human bird flu cases have been traced to contact with birds. The virus has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia since late 2003, and health experts worry if the virus alters to a form that is highly contagious among humans, it could spark a global pandemic that kills millions.

In recent days, the H5N1 virus has been discovered in poultry in Turkey and Romania, which lie along the natural flyways of migratory birds. The European Union was trying to assess whether the virus had spread into Macedonia and Greece, while emergency workers were killing domestic and wild fowl in and near a bird flu-affected village south of Moscow in Russia.

In response, Bangladesh has banned poultry imports from those countries.

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