Spreading bird flu claims first Thai victim

The bird flu virus spread deeper into Asia yesterday and claimed its first human victim in Thailand, a six-year-old boy who caught a disease that is creating fears reminiscent of Sars.

Pakistan said two million chickens had died of a mild form of the disease and Taiwan reported a new outbreak of the mild H5N2 virus which cannot, unlike the H5N1 strain, pass to humans as it has in Vietnam, where it killed six people, and Thailand.

Thailand expanded its bird flu crisis zone to 10 of its 76 provinces from just two as it grappled with a virus the World Health Organisation fears might mate with human influenza and unleash a flu pandemic among people with no immunity to it.

Indonesia said at least 400 farms across the vast archipelago suffered outbreaks. But officials said they would only know by the end of the week, when laboratory test results were available, whether it was the less dangerous of two avian flu strains.

South Korea confirmed a fresh case at a chicken farm and planned to slaughter chickens in the area, the Agriculture Ministry said. South Korea has reported no human cases.

The WHO said it had seen no evidence its greatest fear, people-to-people transmission, had been realised yet.

But it fears the potentially deadly H5N1 strain could jump into Myanmar and Laos from stricken farms just over the border in Thailand.

Hans Wagner, a senior official of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, said 700 chickens had died on a farm in Vientiane, the Lao capital, and a Thai laboratory was trying to find out why.

The results would not be known before today, he said. Confirmation of bird flu in Laos would be very bad news. "Laos also has a very poor public health infrastructure," WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley said in Manila. "If the virus became embedded in Laos, we'll have very serious problems."

The spread of bird flu, which has also struck in Japan and Cambodia, has emerged with a rapidity the WHO calls "historically unprecedented" and the Thai and Indonesian governments have been criticised for not revealing it sooner.

"We don't know how this virus is spreading and so it's safe to presume that nowhere can consider itself safe," Cordingley said. "The challenge is growing by the day."

The Thai boy's death means all but one of at least seven confirmed human bird flu victims have been children, leaving scientists trying to figure out why the young are so vulnerable.

Another Thai boy was confirmed to have contracted bird flu yesterday. The country also has 10 suspected cases, of whom five have died, and tests are underway to determine whether bird flu was the cause.

So far, all the victims have contracted the disease from sick fowl and not from other people.

But a vaccine for people is months away because the virus has mutated since it made the leap from animals to humans in Hong Kong in 1997.

"We have to start again from the drawing board to create a prototype vaccine from this virus, and then we have to go into commercial development and this is a slow business with many clinical trials and other obstacles along the way," Cordingley said.

Right now, the priority is killing all the chickens in range of the virus.

Millions have been slaughtered, especially in Thailand, which raises one billion chickens a year and is the world's fourth biggest poultry exporter.

The Thai government, under attack from the political opposition and newspapers accusing it of covering up the outbreak for weeks while saying it was fighting fowl cholera, has sent troops and prisoners in full protective gear to help.