Thailand confirms 13th bird flu death

A 48-year-old man has died after he ate his neighbour’s sick chickens, making him the 13th person confirmed to have died from bird flu in Thailand.

Initially, authorities said the man, who died yesterday, had tested negative for the virus. But today, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said new lab results confirmed the bird flu diagnosis.

The man, Bang-on Benphat, was admitted to hospital with pneumonia-like symptoms on Sunday, shortly after he cooked and ate his neighbour’s chickens. Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes, but were not tested for bird flu.

But other chickens in the village in the Phanom Thuan district of Kanchanaburi province tested positive for bird flu, said Dr Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control.

The man’s seven-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, is in hospital in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection and is also suspected of having bird flu, Thawat said.

“The people in this area should have known better,” he said. “They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous.”

Meanwhile, three more districts in Kamphangphet province in central Thailand have confirmed bird flu in chickens, The Nation newspaper said today. Hundreds of farmers were forced to cull their flocks, it said.

The country has also begun to stockpile the antiviral Tamiflu, the main drug used to treat bird flu in humans. It has acquired 66,000 doses so far and is also starting clinical trials of its own generic version of the drug.

The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003. Thailand’s last previous human bird flu fatality was on October 8.

Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. But health officials warn the virus could mutate into a form that can be easily passed between humans, possibly triggering a global pandemic which could kill millions.