Second H5N1 bird flu virus case confirmed in Thailand’s Northeast     

BANGKOK: — Laboratory tests have confirmed that the avian flu H5N1 virus was found in a poultry farm in Sri Chiangmai district of the northeastern province of Nong Khai where the suspicious deaths of more than 200 chickens were reported last week, according to a senior official.

Livestock Development Department director-general Pirom Srichan said the district has been declared an outbreak area with round-the-clock monitoring to prevent the illegal movement of poultry.

Strict measures have been imposed since 236 chickens were found dead last Saturday. Local livestock officials ordered mass cullings of the remaining almost 2,000 egg-bearing chickens immediately. The latest lab tests found the H5N1 virus in some chicken carcasses, Mr. Pirom said.

Sri Chiangmai is the second area where the avian flu virus was found in a week after the Public Health Ministry’s Department of Communicable Disease Control announced on January 15 that laboratory tests confirmed the outbreak of the virus after the deaths of more than 100 ducks in Plaichumpol subdistrict of Phitsanulok province in the North, the first such case in six months.

Thailand’s Public Health Ministry ordered its staff and community health volunteers to increase measures to curb the outbreak and prevent its spread to humans.

There have been 25 bird flu patients in Thailand since the most recent outbreak here in 2004, of which 17 patients died of infection with the H5N1 virus.

–TNA 2007-01-23

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