Bird flu kills young girl in Thailand

A nine-year-old girl has died of bird flu in northern Thailand, raising the country’s death toll from the virus to 11, a Health Ministry official said today.

Kanda Srilueng-On died overnight at a hospital in Phetchabun province just hours after tests confirmed she was stricken with the disease, said Dr Kamnuan Ungchoosak, chief of the Health Ministry’s communicable disease control department.

Kanda was hospitalised on September 30 with flu-like symptoms and was believed to have caught the disease from infected chickens. She had helped pluck feathers from birds slaughtered by her mother, who raised chickens, most of which had recently died.

Her mother has not shown symptoms of the illness, but doctors have taken blood samples for testing.

The girl’s death brings the region’s human toll from the disease to 31, with 11 victims in Thailand and 20 in Vietnam.

The disease has also ravaged poultry stocks across Asia, and more than 100 million chickens and other poultry have been killed by the disease or culled since it spread through much of the region early this year.

Thailand launched a major campaign to eradicate the virus last week after it reported what is believed to be the country’s first case of human-to-human transmission.

Volunteers and medical teams have been dispatched across the country to check for evidence of the virus.

Scientists worry that if the virus mutates enough to mix with the human influenza virus it could easily pass between humans and trigger a global pandemic.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra declared war against the disease at an emergency meeting of 76 provincial governors, telling ministers to wipe out the disease by the end of the month, when cooler weather sets in, people become more vulnerable to viruses and migratory birds thought to carry the disease arrive.

But international health officials have said eradicating the virus within a short period is virtually impossible.

Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaisang today met with public health and agriculture officials and poultry industry representatives to discuss ways of preventing the spread of the disease. Thailand is among the world’s top five poultry exporters.

Phetchabun province is 185 miles north of Bangkok.