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Thailand claims bird flu contained
BANGKOK (AP)--Thai authorities have claimed that they have gotten the country's latest bird flu epidemic under control with tighter monitoring and controls, including establishment of testing laboratories in provincial areas and the culling of almost 150 tigers at a zoo.
Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang, who chairs the government's committee in charge of fighting the disease, said its spread in chickens has been markedly slowed, and there have been no recent new cases of human infections, the official Thai news agency reported Nov. 4.
Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra had set a deadline of the end of October to stop the spread of the virus, which has devastated the country's poultry industry.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu appeared throughout Asia early this year, ravaging poultry farms and sparking a region-wide health scare. Authorities in Asia culled tens of millions of birds in an attempt to thwart the spread of the disease, but it resurfaced in July. Twelve people in Thailand and 20 in Vietnam have died from the disease.
Experts from international agencies such as the World Heath Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization have said it will take much more time until the disease is truly under control.
More than 1.5 million chickens were culled in October, as well as 147 tigers at the Sriracha Tiger Zoo in eastern Thailand, who apparently got sick from eating raw infected chickens.
During October, the government also initiated a plan to stop the raising of free-range ducks because they have been found to be virulent carriers of the virus. Duck farming will instead be carried out in so-called closed systems, indoors where the birds are not exposed to outside environment factors.
Laboratories were set up in the northern provinces of Chiang Mai and Phitsanulok, the northeastern provinces of Ubon Ratchathani, Udon Thani, and Nakhon Ratchasima, and the southern province of Songkhla to allow for quicker testing of suspected infection samples which previously would have had to be sent to Bangkok, the capital.
Date: 11/24/04
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