Thailand confirms human bird flu cases

THE bird flu eruption in Asia, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) says could set off an epidemic worse than SARS, has leapt into humans in Thailand and appeared in Cambodia, officials said yesterday.

A chicken butcher, one of six Thais being tested for the disease, died of pneumonia, said Charal Trinwuthipong, director-general of the Department of Disease Control.

After days of declaring the country free of the bird flu which killed five Vietnamese people, the Thai government said two boys, aged six and seven and from different provinces west of Bangkok, were “critical but stable” with the disease.