The bird flu rampaging through Asia made the dreaded leap into impoverished Laos as a second Thai boy died of the disease yesterday and countries tightened defenses against a potential SARS-like epidemic.
A senior Lao Agriculture Ministry official said tests confirmed the disease had struck the area around Vientiane, but not yet whether it was the virulent variety which has killed eight people or a milder variety which does not hit humans.
PHOTO: AP
The confirmation of the disease, which has now struck in nine Asian countries as far apart as Pakistan and Japan, brings the disease ever closer to China's massive chicken farms.
It will also present health experts with a problem they had hoped not to face, if it turns out Laos has the H5N1 strain that has killed people in neighboring Vietnam and Thailand.
WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said it would be especially worrying if the bird flu leapt into humans in Laos because of its "very poor public health infrastructure."
"If the virus became embedded in Laos, we'll have very serious problems," he said on Monday.
The great fear is that the H5N1 virus might mate with human influenza and begin a pandemic among people without immunity to it.
So far, there is no evidence of the virus passing from human to human and generating a new strain that could spark a pandemic. But experts say that no matter how remote the possibility, they fear it could happen.
Some countries, in addition to banning chicken imports from Thailand's huge poultry industry, are taking other measures to try to keep out the bird flu, which experts say most probably is spread by wild birds.
Australia is using sniffer dogs and x-rays to prevent items like feathers, which could carry the virus from Hong Kong and Indonesia, from entering the country and tightening controls at sea.
Singapore is shielding its bird farms with netting and banning the public from poultry farms. Japan is to ban imports of pet birds from affected countries.
In Thailand the government expanded its bird flu crisis zone to 13 of its 76 provinces. The number was listed as 10 yesterday.
The government is mounting a political defense after admitting it remained silent about its suspicions that bird flu arrived weeks ago.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra pleaded with reporters not to sensationalize the story after the EU, the second biggest customer of a Thai chicken industry, which earns more than US$1 billion a year in exports, said it did not trust his government.
"You don't have to protect this government, this government can stay or can go any time, but this country must survive, Thai people must be healthy. Don't sex up your reports," Thaksin said after being widely accused of a cover-up.
EU spokeswoman Beate Gminder said the 15-member bloc would demand independent verification of Thai measures to wipe out the disease before it considered lifting its ban on imports of Thai chicken.
"Reliance on Thai assurances is not the best way forward," she said.
Gminder also shot down Thaksin's assurances to Thailand's vast army of chicken farmers, many of whom have accused him of telling the world there was fowl cholera when they suspected bird flu, that the crisis would be over in a month. It would be at least five months before Thai poultry would be back on EU supermarket shelves, she said. Japan, the biggest buyer of Thai chicken, says its ban will stay for at least 90 days after it is satisfied Thai poultry is safe again.
The spread of bird flu has emerged with a rapidity the WHO calls "historically unprecedented."
"We don't know how this virus is spreading and so it's safe to presume that nowhere can consider itself safe," Cordingley said. "The challenge is growing by the day."
The deaths of the Thai boys means all but one of at least eight confirmed flu victims have been children, leaving scientists trying to figure out why the young are so vulnerable.
Thailand also has 10 suspected cases, of whom five have died, and tests are underway to determine whether bird flu was the cause. Right now, the priority is killing all the chickens in range of the virus.
Millions have been slaughtered, especially in Thailand.
The country raises one billion chickens a year and is the fourth biggest poultry exporter in the world.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS