MSNBC Bird flu spreading, UN warns

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>Bird flu spreading, UN warns, as toll hits six

>U.N. officials said on Saturday the deadly bird flu that has jumped

>to humans in Vietnam and Thailand was spreading -- a warning grimly

>underlined by confirmation of a sixth death from the disease.

>http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4034127/

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Bird flu spreading, UN warns

 

Sixth death from the disease confirmed

 

Updated: 2:26 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2004

 

BANGKOK, Thailand - U.N. officials said on Saturday the deadly bird

flu that has jumped to humans in Vietnam and Thailand was spreading

-- a warning grimly underlined by confirmation of a sixth death from

the disease.

 

Experts fear the avian virus could set off an epidemic worse than

SARS, another disease which crossed from animals to humans, killed

800 people and frightened the world last year.

 

" There's no denying the disease is spreading, " Anton Rychener,

Vietnam representative for the Food and Agriculture Organization, a

U.N. body, told Reuters.

 

The World Health Organization said a 13-year-old Vietnamese boy had

died on Thursday from the H5N1 strain of avian flu, and that an

eight-year-old girl had tested positive for the virus.

 

She was critically ill in Ho Chi Minh City, the first confirmed cases

of bird flu in southern Vietnam since four children and one adult

died in the country's north.

 

In Thailand, a chicken butcher, one of six Thais being tested for the

disease, is believed to have died of pneumonia on Friday, but more

tests were being done, officials said.

 

The WHO has said the near-simultaneous bird flu outbreaks in Japan,

South Korea, Vietnam and now Thailand and Cambodia were " historically

unprecedented. "

 

Thailand will host a meeting on Wednesday of senior health and

agriculture officials from Asian countries and international agencies

fighting the outbreak.

 

Thailand denies cover-up

Thailand denied on Saturday it had tried to cover up an outbreak of

bird flu, saying it had had suspicions for weeks but had only known

for certain when tests confirmed the disease.

 

After weeks of declaring the country free of bird flu, the government

confirmed on Friday that two boys, aged six and seven, had contracted

the highly infectious virus.

 

" The government never realized it was avian influenza before

yesterday, but it was suspecting that it might be. That's why some

measures in extraordinary degrees had been put in place, " said

Jakrapob Penkair, the government's chief spokesman.

 

Critics have accused the Thai government of trying to hide the

outbreak by blaming the deaths of tens of thousands of chickens since

November on poultry cholera.

 

" The government's efforts to sweep the problem under the carpet has

exploded in its face, leaving the poultry industry in tatters and the

very safety of the public in jeopardy, " the Bangkok Post newspaper

said in an editorial on Saturday.

 

Facing ruin

The bird flu outbreak threatens to devastate the Thai chicken

industry, the world's fourth largest with exports worth $1.5 billion

annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people.

 

The European Union, the number two buyer of Thai chicken, and Japan,

Thailand's biggest customer, has banned imports of Thai chicken. So

too have Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Bangladesh and South Korea.

 

With 81,000 families dependent on 30,000 poultry farms and related

industries such as feed, analysts say the immediate impact of bird

flu jumping to humans will be largely economic.

 

Thailand has culled more than seven million chickens in 24 of 76

provinces so far, with authorities now focusing their efforts on the

hardest-hit province, Suphan Buri, northwest of Bangkok.

 

Chickens on more than 300 farms in Suphan Buri have been killed and

authorities plan to slaughter birds on another 200 farms by the end

of Sunday, the ITV television network said.

 

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who says the import bans will have

a " trivial " impact on exports, tried to play down the controversy

over his government's handling of the crisis.

 

" There has been a lot of talk that the government had tried to cover

up cases of the bird flu, " he said in his weekly radio address on

Saturday.

 

" We had been trying to solve the problem, but we would not have

spoken out before the lab tests came out. Otherwise it would have

caused panic, " said Thaksin, who ate a chicken lunch with his cabinet

on Tuesday to soothe public safety fears.

 

But on the busy streets of Bangkok, people were shunning barbecued

chicken, chicken satays and soups.

 

" I have been selling food for over 30 years, and nothing has ever

happened like this. People are just avoiding eating chicken meat, "

said food-stall owner Lek Saetung.

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