Experts ring alarm bells over bird flu

BANGKOK - Asian countries should intensify their war on a deadly bird flu that shows no signs of receding with fresh outbreaks in China and which threatens to evolve into a Sars-like epidemic, health experts said on Thursday.

The disease has ravaged poultry flocks and the World Health Organisation has warned that people are still at risk from the H5N1 virus that has killed 22 people in Asia.

"We are in an emergency, urgency mode," Bjorn Melgaard, the WHO representative in Thailand, told regional health experts gathered in Bangkok to compare notes on fighting the virus.

"The bird epidemic is unfolding and continuing to spread at an unprecedented rate."

China confirmed there had been three outbreaks among poultry in three provinces on Thursday, but so far no human cases of the virus that has killed 15 Vietnamese and seven Thais. In Vietnam, a 16-month-old baby girl was confirmed with H5N1 on Thursday, a day after a 3-year-old boy died in the country's latest death from the disease.

Melgaard recalled that a year ago Asia faced an even deadlier epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) that killed more than 800 people before it was finally brought under control.

"We are again confronting yet another emerging disease with the potential of causing a global epidemic," he said, urging nations not to relax their surveillance and detection efforts.

Thailand and Vietnam, where all the human cases have been reported, have talked about declaring victory over the virulent H5N1 virus in a matter of weeks. Thailand, which found recurrences of the disease in 14 areas this month, still says it expects to do so next month. The Thai Government, with an eye on the country's shattered US$1 billion ($1.42 billion) a year poultry trade, is eager to resume exports and sent a high-level delegation to top-buyer Japan this week.

In Vietnam, Premier Phan Van Khai urged officials not to let their guard down despite his earlier orders that the disease be brought under control this month.

Outbreaks have been reported in 57 of Vietnam's 64 provinces and 27 million birds have either died or been destroyed.

Another 30 million birds have been slaughtered in Thailand, and Taiwan said on Thursday it would slaughter 13,000 fowl as a milder form of bird flu hit two more chicken farms.

Health experts say the risk of a human pandemic grows the longer the virus lingers. They worry the virus could infect a person who also has the human flu virus, allowing it to mutate into a strain that could spread through people with no immunity.

- REUTERS