Thai toddler infected with bird flu

An 18 month old boy has become the 21st person in Thailand to catch the H5N1 bird flu virus, but is recovering in hospital, a senior health ministry official said today.

The boy lives in a house in the Bangkok suburb of Minburi, where three fighting cocks and a chicken also lived, said Dr Thawat Suntarajarn, director-general of Thailand’s Department of Communicable Disease Control.

All the birds had died, and soon after the boy was taken to hospital with flu symptoms.

Laboratory results received today confirmed that the boy had H5N1 bird flu.

The boy was now in a hospital in Bangkok, and his symptoms were described as not severe.

Twenty-one people in Thailand have caught bird flu since it swept into Asia in late 2003, and 13 of them have died.

There have been four confirmed cases this year, one of them fatal.