New Bird Flu Outbreak Leads UN Health Orgs To Urge Fast Action

by Marwaan Macan-Markar

(IPS) BANGKOK -- In the wake of new outbreaks of bird flu in three Asian countries and reports of possible human-to-human transmission of the deadly virus that later proved false, more chickens in the affected countries are destined for the chopping block.

But besides the mass culling of poultry, senior UN officials are also urging Asia's 10 affected countries to strictly enforce more restrictive measures to contain the spread of the contagion.

"The movement of people, animals, good equipment in affected areas should be urgently restricted," He Changchui, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Asia-Pacific office, said at a press conference Monday.

Affected areas should not have "public meetings where you get many farmers together," added Hans Wagner, senior animal production and health officer at the UN food agency's Asia-Pacific office.

According to He, "the situation remains serious in China, Thailand and Vietnam," where new cases have been detected, suggesting that "the disease is far from being under control."

By Jan. 31, over 45 million chickens -- or less than one percent of the total -- had been culled out of Asia's estimated seven billion chicken population, a FAO backgrounder revealed. "The region accounts for approximately one-quarter of the world poultry trade, with China and Thailand the largest exporters."

Eradication campaigns applying internationally recommended emergency measures must continue, He stressed, singling out "mass culling, quarantine (and) disease monitoring."

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Pakistan are the other countries besides China, Vietnam and Thailand on the list of Asia's 10 avian-flu affected countries.

The bird flu virus, which is transmitted through the air and is released in nasal secretions and the feces of infected birds, created a stir in Hong Kong in 1997, when the lethal H5N1 strain infected 18 people, six of whom died.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the bird flu virus can survive in cool temperatures, and in water it can survive for up to four days at 22 degrees centigrade and more than 30 days at freezing temperature. "For the highly pathogenic form, studies have shown that a single gram of contaminated manure can contain enough virus to infect 1 million birds," the UN health agency's backgrounder notes.

The Feb. 2 call for more culling and urgent monitoring of the virus came in the wake of a disturbing development -- reports over the weekend of the first possible case of human-to-human transmission of avian flu, a situation that the WHO warned last week could have dire consequences.

Last week, the WHO issued a statement declaring that the human-to-human transmission of bird flu "is one possible explanation" behind the deaths of two sisters, aged 23 and 30 years, in Vietnam.

"The two sisters who died are part of a cluster of four cases of severe respiratory illness in a family from Thai Binh province," the WHO declared. "The investigation failed to reveal a specific event, such as contact with infected poultry or an environmental source, that might explain the source of infection in these cases."

According to the WHO, the brother of the two sisters was part of the cluster of four cases and he was hospitalized in Hanoi with a severe respiratory illness on Jan. 7 and died on Jan. 12, shortly before his sisters were admitted to the hospital.

"There is no clear evidence how the sisters were infected," Dr Bjorn Melgard, head of the WHO's Thailand office, told the press. "We cannot rule out that these cases are human to human transmissions." [UPDATE FEB. 6: WHO has determined that the sisters did contract the illness from chickens, not from other family members.

These three deaths are among the 11 people who have died of the H5N1 virus in Vietnam out of a total of 15 reported cases of infections. Thailand is the only other country in the region with five deaths out of five reported cases of bird flu infections.

In late January, Dr Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, drew the attention to a possible health crisis if the lethal avian flu evolves into a virus that people can transmit from one to another. "The ensuing virus would then be highly pathogenic."

Yet at the same time, Melgard attempted to dispel the growing fear among the public that consuming cooked chicken was dangerous. "Processed products and properly prepared cooked chicken are safe to eat."

"This concern about eating well-cooked chicken, the fear is unfounded," he added.

The WHO recommends that chicken meat cooked at 60 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes is safe for eating.

But such information -- that the virus will be killed by intense heat -- has still to convince the Thai public, who are showing increasing reluctance to return to a favourite meat dish following the initial scares about infected chickens.

On Feb. 2, the local press reported that even the recent publicity stunts by the government's leaders, led by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, had not been digested the proper way by the public.

"The public is staying shy of chicken," the 'Bangkok Post' newspaper reported in its Monday edition. "The great majority (88 percent) of the respondents (surveyed in two polls) were eating much less chicken than before and only 12 percent said their consumption had not diminished."

On Saturday, Thaksin and his cabinet members launched their chicken chow down at an outlet of the fast-food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken in downtown Bangkok. The event was captured by a battery of photographers.