Thailand says Laos to blame for spread of bird flu

Jul 31 2006

According to official sources an emergency cabinet meeting has been held in the communist state of Laos to discuss how to combat the latest outbreak of avian influenza in the landlocked country.

Thailand has quite pointedly placed the blame for it's own outbreak of the virus on the transportation of eggs and poultry across the borders with Laos.

The outbreak in north east Thailand's Nakhon Phanom province near the border with Laos and the death of a teenager earlier have prompted the Thai authorities to clamp down in order to control the situation.

Thailand has been fighting to control bird flu since late 2003, when it was first detected among the country's commercial chicken farms, which were once a thriving export business.

The latest outbreak in Laos has occurred on a commercial farm 25 km south of Vientiane 300 km from Nakhon Panom, where according to reports as many as 2,500 chickens died last week.

The Laos government has imposed a temporary ban on the sale of chicken meat at markets and restaurants in Vientiane and more than 6,000 birds at the poultry farm have reportedly been culled.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported last week that the deadly virus had been found on the poultry farm in Laos, which is the country's first major outbreak since 2004 and they are sending in a bird flu expert to assess the situation.

The Laos government has acknowledged that its poultry population has been infected by the H5N1 virus, after investigating complaints that infected birds had been exported to neighbouring Thailand.

Thailand declared itself bird-flu free during the first six months of this year, but then the virus reappeared among poultry in July when the teenager became the 15th human victim of the lethal virus.

Thailand is now closely monitoring for bird flu in the provinces which border Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The Thai Ministry of Public Health says in its latest statistics that 80 people in 19 Thai provinces are now suspected of having bird flu.

Thai authorities will visit Laos for talks on how to cooperate against bird flu outbreaks across the border.