Bird flu death toll hits 31 as culling efforts are hampered

THE human toll from bird flu reached 31 yesterday when Thailand confirmed a nine-year-old girl died from the disease, while Indonesia joined the list of countries struggling with Asia’s second wave of outbreaks.

In Malaysia, which escaped the first wave of the bird flu crisis early this year but reported an outbreak last month, authorities in the northern Kelantan state said that they were having trouble chasing down chickens for culling at farms where the birds often are allowed to roam free, perching on trees or creeping into bushes.

Kanda Srilueng-On, aged 9, died overnight at a hospital in Thailand's Phetchabun province only hours after tests confirmed she was stricken with the disease, the Health Ministry said yesterday.

She was believed to have caught the disease from infected chickens, and had helped pluck feathers from slaughtered chickens that her family had raised.

Kanda Srilueng-On's death brought to 11 the number of human deaths in Thailand, which went on high alert last week after reporting its first probable case of human-to-human transmission of the bird flu disease.

In Vietnam, the only other country to suffer human cases of the virus, 20 people have died.

In addition, more than 100 million chickens and poultry have been killed by the disease or been culled in systematic efforts to curb its spread since the bird flu crisis erupted through much of Asia early this year.

The spread of the disease had largely subsided by April, but since July countries dealing with a second wave of the disease have included Thailand, Vietnam, China, Malaysia and now Indonesia.

Indonesian officials said the virus resurfaced in the country's main island of Java, killing 350 chickens and prompting authorities to urge farmers to vaccinate their flocks.

Tests on the dead birds showed they had the dangerous H5N1 strain of the virus, livestock officials were quoted in the Jakarta Post as saying.

There were no reports of people infected in Indonesia.

Most people who catch bird flu have had contact with sick birds.

World health officials worry that the longer it takes to contain outbreaks in poultry, the more chances the virus will have to jump to humans and mix with a human influenza virus to form a version that easily passes from person-to-person, possibly sparking the next pandemic.

However, health experts say there's no evidence to suggest that has happened yet, even in the case of probable human-to-human transmission reported in Thailand.

The World Health Organisation's representative in Thailand said that the Thai case in which a mother was believed to have caught bird flu from her daughter while caring for her at a hospital was the result of close, face-to-face contact and probably represented a single, dead-end transmission, not the start of a major human outbreak.