Six people die from bird flu in Vietnam

SIX people have died in Vietnam from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu and Cambodia said yesterday that two children living outside the capital Phnom Penh were suspected of having contracted the disease.

However, the outbreaks across Asia have mostly affected poultry, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 20 million chickens.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that while the virus has so far only infected people in direct contact with chickens, it could create a deadly global pandemic if it mutates into a form transmitted through human contact.

Yesterday, the WHO warned that Asian countries may need help to carry out poultry culls, seen as the best way to contain the disease, quickly and safely.

"They certainly need assistance, some of them need financial support and some of them have said that there may be a shortage of culling equipment," said WHO spokesman Ian Simpson in Geneva.

The European Union signalled that its ban on Thai chicken may stay in place until Thailand was declared free of the disease. France cautioned travellers to avoid poultry and hogs in affected countries and Russia banned poultry imports from four more Asian countries Thailand, Cambodia, Taiwan and Indonesia.

As Thailand announced that the virus had spread across a vast swathe of the kingdom, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appealed for calm. "People should not panic. The disease is not easily caught by humans. Only those who live closely with chickens are at risk," he said in a call unheeded by investors who sent the bourse's main index tumbling 3.83%.

Thai health officials said a six-year-old boy died in hospital on Sunday and that there were two other confirmed cases of the disease as well as 10 suspected infections including five who have already died.

Thailand's epidemic has forced a cull of some 11 million chickens, focused on two western provinces, but yesterday, the virus was identified in eight more provinces, vastly expanding the infected zone north to the Laos border. The government said its priority now was to enforce the chicken cull, a grisly task being carried out by hundreds of soldiers and government workers who pack the chickens into bags before burying them alive.

In an alarming sign that the disease has spread much further than previously thought, Pakistani researchers announced that avian influenza had killed up to four million chickens in the port city of Karachi since November.

The Pakistan Poultry Association said, however, that the H7 and H9 strain identified there was not as fatal as the H5N1 virus responsible for most of the infections in Asia.