Bird Flu Watch: Phichit Thailand (again)

And I thought Thailand had it safe.

I recently posted that Thailand had been stepping up its surveillance of avian flu , but despite best efforts new bird flu cases have been creeping up lately.

Last week in Phichit, two young children were hospitalized from what is feared to be flu caused by the virulent H5N1 strain. Today, the Bangkok Post reports that two more women, a 42- year old and a 4-year old came down with a flu after “they touched dead chicken carcasses at their homes”. Also in neighboring Phitsanulok, two men and a boy got sick and were hospitalized when they “had direct contact with chicken in areas where mass chicken deaths were reported”. According to Fox News, a flock of chickens had died in the Phichit province, and health officials suspect the cause is infection by the H5N1 and not the less virulent H5N2 virus.

I personally think that it is quite certain that it is H5N1, judging from the circumstances in which the chickens died,” admitted Nirandorn Auengtrakulsuk, head of the Agriculture Ministry’s Disease Control Department, referring to the high number of deaths.

“If it was H5N2, the number of chickens that died should not be this high,” he said, adding that laboratory results confirming the type should be available within a week. Some 300 birds in the area were culled.

Thailand had been case-free for the past eight months because of concerted efforts to monitor and cull infected chickens and birds expeditely. So I’m surprised that people still handle dead chickens and birds that died mysteriously. To think that Phichit and Phitsanulok are provinces considered as “bird flu red zones”. The country, and its neighboring asian countries, definitely need to be more vigilant than ever to warn people of how deadly it can be to handle carcasses of birds, and more so inform on how to protect oneself from being infected with the virus .

[News Sources: Bangkok Post; Fox News; Thailand News Agency]

Tags: avian flu, flu outbreak, H5N1, Thailand