Bird flu reports spreading in Asia
Pastor Dale Morgan
Bird flu reports spreading in Asia*
POSTED: 0527 GMT (1327 HKT), January 16, 2007
JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters) -- An Indonesian hospital was on Monday
overwhelmed with patients suffering bird flu symptoms while the virus
spread further among flocks in Vietnam and flared anew in Thailand.
A recent spurt of human infections with the H5N1 bird flu virus, which
re-emerged in Asia in late 2003, has alarmed health officials.
Four Indonesians have died this year after a six-week lull in cases,
taking the number of people killed by bird flu in the country to 61, the
highest in the world.
At Jakarta's Persahabatan hospital, where doctors were treating 9 people
with bird flu symptoms, including a 5-year-old girl in intensive care,
its isolation wards were overwhelmed.
"If we get more patients, we will send them to Sulianti Saroso," Muchtar
Ichsan, the head of the bird flu ward, told Reuters, referring the
country's main bird flu treatment centre in North Jakarta.
The patients included the son and husband of a woman who died of bird
flu last week. The 18-year-old son has been confirmed to have the
disease, although tests so far on the husband show he does not have the
virus.
In a bid to stem the spread of the virus, Indonesia plans to prohibit
people from keeping backyard fowl in three high-risk provinces.
Adding to regional worries, a senior Thai agriculture official said on
Monday that 1,900 ducks had been culled in the northern province of
Phitsanulok after some of the birds had tested positive for H5N1.
The case is Thailand's first in birds since last July. The last human
death -- the country's 17th -- occurred in August.
Experts fear the H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that could spread
easily between people, but there has been no evidence of human-to-human
transmission of the virus so far in the latest cases.
The World Health Organisation says bird flu has infected 267 people and
killed 161 of them since 2003.
Emergency levels
The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the spike in cases in the
northern hemisphere winter follows a similar pattern to that seen over
the past three years and was to be expected.
But it was encouraging that outbreaks were being quickly reported and
dealt with, a senior WHO official said.
"It is not surprising that we are seeing an increase (in cases) ... but
we are seeing much more effective responses than we were a few years
ago," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's coordinator for the global influenza
programme, told journalists.
In Vietnam, where bird flu has killed 42 of the 93 people infected since
2003, the virus appeared to be spreading fast among fowl in the
country's southern Mekong Delta, threatening to engulf the major
rice-growing region.
The Animal Health Department said in a report seen on Monday that tests
showed H5N1 had killed ducks in the province of Soc Trang, just a day
after bird flu was found in the neighbouring province of Tra Vinh.
The Agriculture Ministry has ordered an additional poultry vaccination
campaign in the Mekong Delta area and requested reinforcement of animal
health teams to contain the spread.
Farm ministry officials in Japan said there was no evidence of the
disease spreading there following confirmation at the weekend of a bird
flu outbreak at a poultry farm in the southwest in which 3,800 chickens
died.