Thai leader denies bird flu cover-up

Thailand’s prime minister today denied accusations that his government had tried to cover up an outbreak of bird flu that is suspected of having kille at least one person and has devastated poultry farms across the country.

Thaksin Shinawatra said in a weekly radio address: “If we came out and said this was it (bird flu) without the lab results, it would have caused even more panic.

“People have tried to accuse us of a cover-up, but when it wasn’t official I don’t know why we would have announced it,” he said.

Poultry farmers had been complaining for weeks that not enough was being done to stop the avian flu spreading from neighbouring countries, including hard-hit Vietnam, where at least six people have died from the disease.

The outbreak is expected to have serious economic repercussions in Thailand - the world’s fourth largest chicken exporter, according to the government. It exported 500,000 tons of chicken worth 52 billion baht (€1.1bn) in 2003.

Thaksin said Thailand’s gross domestic product could slip by as much as 0.1 percentage point because of bans on Thai chicken imposed by the country’s biggest markets – Japan and the European Union – along with many other countries.

“If they are going to stop buying, we have to be deal with it,” Thaksin said, although he predicted the outbreak would be under control in about 30 days. “This is the worst-case scenario. Whatever we lose, we have to lose.”

Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak said the government will “send teams to talk to customers abroad to help build confidence” in Thai chicken and ask Japan to reduce its 90-day ban on the country’s poultry.

“If we can control this in one month, we think the bird flu losses will be less than 10 billion baht (€203.9bn),” he told reporters.

Today, about 600 Agriculture Ministry officials, wearing protective masks and gloves, were culling chickens in Suphanburi, the hardest-hit province about 100 kilometres north of Bangkok, said Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob.

More than seven million chickens have been killed since November, he said.

On Friday, the government ended weeks of denial and acknowledged that bird flu had broken out.

Government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said that the Cabinet had approved plans for a January 28 meeting of ministers from affected countries and international influenza experts.

Jakrapob denied news reports quoting him as saying the government was aware of the bird flu outbreak but deliberately concealed it for several weeks.

Thaksin tried to explain the slow response, saying the government had to take into account the economy and farmers’ interests along with public health concerns.

He said the government had treated the suspected outbreak ”as if it was bird flu” and if it had not already taken steps to thwart it, “it would have spread across the country”.

Thailand began culling chickens in November, although the government insisted the fowl were sick with bird cholera or bacterial respiratory disease, and that the country was bird flu-free.

Opposition politicians and senators have accused the government of deceiving the public to protect the country’s poultry exports.

The opposition Democrats plan to launch no-confidence motions against Thaksin. The Nation newspaper demanded an independent probe in a rare front-page editorial today, and scolded the government for failing to acknowledge the outbreak sooner.

“These things cannot be predicted, but we still have every right to point the finger at the government,” it said. “The authorities should have faced up to the problem sooner.”

Officials said yesterday that a 56-year-old man who bred fighting cocks near Bangkok was suspected of having died from the virus, but that initial tests showed he had a bacterial infection.

“At this point, we have one death from pneumonia, but we still don’t know if he died of bird flu. We should know the test results within three days,” Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said.

Two boys, aged six and seven, have been confirmed as bird flu cases, and are seriously ill. Two other people are suspected of having the disease.

Two experts from the World Health Organisation are to arrive in Thailand on Monday to help cope with the outbreak, said Dr Somchai Peerapakorn, the agency’s acting regional representative in Thailand.