Bird flu epidemic 'a global crisis'
Asia’s bird flu epidemic is a ”crisis of global importance”, two UN agencies warned as Thailand went on nationwide alert yesterday after the virus was confirmed in a woman whose case has raised concerns over human-to-human transmission.
Recent outbreaks among poultry in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand show that the virus is still gripping the region and probably won’t be eradicated soon, the two agencies said in a joint statement.
“A permanent threat to animal and human health continues to exist,” the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health said.
The warning came hours after Thai authorities confirmed that a woman was suffering from bird flu, the second person in Thailand confirmed with the disease since it resurfaced in July after appearing to subside for a few months.
The woman, identified only as Pranom, 32, is in an isolation ward in hospital but her condition has been improving, Charal Trinwuthipong, director general of the Disease Control Department, told reporters yesterday. He said Pranom’s six-year-old son is also sick.
The announcement about Pranom raised fears of human-to-human transmission because her sister and niece died earlier this month of symptoms similar to bird flu, although it was impossible to confirm if they had the virus.
Human-to-human transmission was suspected in the past in Vietnam and Hong Kong, but never confirmed. All the known victims of the disease so far contracted the virus from infected birds.
Nine people have died of bird flu in Thailand and 19 in Vietnam this year. Tens of millions of chickens and other birds have also died or been culled throughout much of Asia.
Scientists fear a global pandemic if it is proved that the virus has mutated to mix with the human influenza virus and can jump easily from one human to another.
The Thai government went on high alert and ordered one million health workers and volunteers to inform people about the need to keep tabs on dead poultry. They were also told to distribute handbooks and posters to all villages.
The avian influenza epidemic in Asia is a ’crisis of global importance’ and will continue to demand the attention of the international community for some time to come, the FAO and OIE joint statement said.
::The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as “Spanish Flu” or “La Grippe” the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.
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