Thailand's government Tuesday declared 29 provinces bird flu
emergency zones, a move that will allow it to more easily make
payments to farmers whose birds are slaughtered.
The move, approved at Tuesday's weekly cabinet meeting, came in
the wake of several new outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 virus among
poultry and two human fatalities the first in more than eight
months.
Provincial governors and agriculture, livestock and health
volunteers will go to farms and households in the 29 provinces this
week "to look for anyone with respiratory illness, register
poultry, spray anti-bacterial chemicals in the area where poultry
are raised and spread information" about bird flu, said government
spokesman Suraphong Suebwonglee.
"This will be simultaneously done in the 29 provinces where bird
flu has ever been found in recent years," he said.
By declaring the provinces disaster zones, the government is
allowed to use a special budget to compensate farmers whose birds
are slaughtered as a precautionary measure against the disease.
A mass slaughter is the main standard procedure recommended by
experts such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to control
the spread of the virus.
Under the government's latest policy, officials have been
ordered to slaughter poultry within a one-kilometer radius of any
area where birds are dying in unusual circumstances, without having
to wait for lab results of tests for bird flu, Suraphong said. The
only exception is "up-to-standard" farms.
Indonesian teenager dies
An Indonesian teenager died of bird flu Tuesday, local testing
indicated, the second fatality in as many days. If confirmed, the
latest death lifts the country's human deaths from H5N1 to 44.
The Health Ministry said 16-year-old Okky Jelina died at the
regional Sari Asih hospital in Tangerang, west of Jakarta. She was
admitted on August 4, but died before she could be transferred to
the capital for specialist treatment.
A day earlier, a boy of the same age died of the H5N1 strain of
the virus on the other side of the city.
(China Daily August 9, 2006)
