Thai man dies of bird flu after eating sick chickens

A 48-YEAR-OLD man has died of bird flu in Thailand after eating his neighbour’s sick chickens, and Taiwan yesterday confirmed the island nation’s first case of the disease in birds smuggled in from China.

In Russia, emergency workers were killing domestic and wild fowl in and near a bird flu-affected village south of Moscow while the World Health Organisation said China had destroyed 91,100 birds around a farm in the country's north to stop an outbreak.

The birds were culled after 2,600 chickens and ducks died of the H5N1 strain of the virus in a breeding facility in a village in the Inner Mongolia region.