Bird flu claims another victim, UN sounds warning
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-02-18 17:11

Asia's human bird flu toll rose to 21 on Wednesday as Thailand said a young boy had died of the disease decimating poultry flocks across the region and the WHO pleaded with governments not to rush to declare it under control.

"This virus is still spreading no matter what some authorities are saying about it being under control. It is spreading on a daily basis," World Health Organization (WHO) Manila-based spokesman Peter Cordingley said.

Hardest-hit Thailand and Vietnam, where all the human cases have been reported, are talking about declaring victory over the virulent H5N1 virus in a matter of weeks.

Cordingley said such a move would carry great risks.

"If you re-stock too soon and the virus is still in the environment and you get a second infection in a re-stocked flock, then you have an endemic situation where the virus is embedded in the region and risk a recurrence every flu season," he said.

"We all got a lesson of what just happened in Thailand," he said after the Bangkok government announced the virus was still present in eight areas in which all poultry had been slaughtered and had spread to a new region.

"We don't want anybody declaring this is over," Cordingley said after the slaughter of 80 million poultry in the eight Asian countries afflicted by the H5N1 virus.

Thailand, the world's fourth-biggest chicken exporter which had hoped to declare the epidemic under control this month until finding recurrences, still says it expects to do so next month.

Vietnamese officials say they are optimistic they can meet Prime Minister Pham Van Khai's goal of bringing it under control this month.

MAYBE NEVER

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said it would be at least a year, perhaps never, before the virus, thought to be spread by migrating birds, was under control.

"We calculate that it will be at least one year until we can confidently say that we are on top of the problem, provided that countries collaborate and that donors come up with the necessary funds," said Samuel Jutzi, head of the animal health department.

"We still hope that the countries in the region can get on top of the disease but we are less certain as to whether the virus can be pushed back or eradicated," he said in Rome.

"It may well be that the sector has to live with this virus as it tries to live with other diseases."

The WHO expects more people to catch bird flu, which has killed at least 14 Vietnamese and seven Thais, the latest a four-year-old boy who died on February 3 and was now confirmed to have been infected with the virus.

The health body and the FAO take some comfort from the relatively low number of human cases in a region where millions of people live close to poultry and many thousands have taken part in culling.

That showed the H5N1 virus has difficulty jumping the species barrier, officials said.

They did not rule out the risk, however remote, that the virus could infect a person incubating a human flu virus and would then mutate into a strain that could cause a pandemic.

"As long as the epidemic continues, the risk of a new virus emerging is still there," said WHO Bangkok representative Bjorn Melgaard.