Bird flu has killed a Thai villager, the first human victim in Thailand in a year, highlighting the difficulties south-east Asian countries still face in stamping out the disease.
EU members evaluate own plans to handle disease
Bird flu has killed a Thai villager, the first human death from the virus in Thailand in a year, highlighting the difficulties south-east Asian countries still face in stamping out the disease.
Bang-on Benphat, 48, was hospitalised with pneumonia-like symptoms on Sunday, after he and his seven-year-old son plucked, cut up and cooked his neighbour's chickens, which had died suddenly. The boy, who has been hospitalised in Bangkok, is also suspected of having bird flu.
Experts say such handling of dead birds reflects the need for stronger public information campaigns to raise awareness in south-east Asia of high-risk practices. These include drinking duck's blood in Vietnam, close contact with fighting cocks and allowing poultry to run free in villagers' homes.
“There is still way too much inappropriate behaviour going on right across the region, and it has to do with people just not understanding the risks they are taking,” said Peter Cordingly, a regional spokesman for the World Health Organisation.
News of Thailand's 13th human bird flu death since the virus hit the country's poultry flocks in late 2003 came as Haruhiko Kuroda, president of the Asian Development Bank, warned that a modest increase in the scale of Asia's bird flu epidemic could cause losses of up to $35bn (€29bn, £20bn) in trade, commerce and tourism in south-east Asia and China.
He said a full-blown pandemic affecting most of the region could cause losses up to $150bn.
The risk of bird flu turning into a human disease was “very low indeed”, said Patricia Hewitt, UK health secretary, after a meeting of European Union health ministers in London yesterday.
The ministers discussed their national plans for dealing with any bird flu outbreak. Each country is responsible for its own plan, and for buying anti-viral medicines.
However, Markos Kyprianou, the EU's health commissioner, stressed the need for a proposed €1bn ($1.2bn, £679m) “solidarity” fund now before the European parliament, that would be used to buy anti-viral drugs in the case of a pandemic.
While European governments have been alarmed at the detection of the lethal H5N1 virus in wild birds and other poultry in Europe, avian influenza is now endemic in parts of Asia despite the culling of millions of birds over the past year. More than 60 people in south-east Asia have died from the disease.