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.
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