Vietnam confirmed a new bird flu death to bring Asia's human toll to 30 yesterday, while Thailand rued its flawed efforts to control the epidemic after reporting its first likely case of the virus jumping from one person to another.
"Bird flu is a big problem ... we have to help each other manage. We have to fight a war to eliminate the bird flu," Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said, addressing an emergency meeting of 76 provincial governors.
Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang conceded that the government has not done a good job of educating poultry breeders, especially small-time farmers in rural areas, about the disease.
"The people who live in rural areas who raise chickens are not well informed and lack a sense of awareness about the dangers," Chaturon told reporters before a meeting with health and agriculture ministry officials.
Chaturon, who heads a panel on efforts to prevent the disease's spread, said government ministries had failed to work together properly on bird flu and that better coordination was "urgently needed."
On Tuesday, Thai health authorities confirmed that Pranee Sodchuen, a 26-year-old woman, died Sept. 20 of bird flu, probably after catching the disease while taking care of her daughter Sakuntala.
The 11-year-old, who is believed to have been ill with the disease, died Sept. 12 but was cremated before tests to confirm the disease could be conducted. Pranee's 32-year-old sister, who also tended to Sakuntala in the hospital, was diagnosed with bird flu on Monday and is now in an isolation ward.
Pranee became Thailand's 10th confirmed victim of the disease, and the overall toll stood at 30 in the region after Vietnam -- the only other country to confirm human deaths -- yesterday reported its 20th fatality.
The 14-month-old baby in Hanoi was sickened with bird flu's typical symptoms of fever and coughing on Aug. 28 and died Sept. 5, a Vietnamese Health Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
Addressing the governors' meeting, Thaksin asked them to boost cooperation among themselves and with public health and agriculture ministries for around-the-clock surveillance of bird flu over the next month.
Pranee is the first person believed to have contracted the disease from another human, rather than poultry. International health experts said that so far the transmission of the virus from Sakuntala to Pranee looks like an isolated dead-end incident.
"At the moment I think it's ... a one-alarm fire, not a four-alarm fire," flu expert Dr. William Schaffner said overnight at Vanderbilt University in the US.
In a statement yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said "inefficient, limited human-to-human transmission" may occur on rare occasions, implying that it doesn't pose a danger of pandemic proportions. But investigators must determine whether the human to human transmission "has been efficient and sustained" in the Thai case. If that is proved, it "would be cause for alarm, as it might signal the start of an influenza pandemic," the WHO said.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS