Bird flu: virus from China strikes Thailand, Laos
This is the outcome of FAO testing. Beijing dismissed the news as "groundless" but did not deny an illegal poultry trade between the countries. There were more infections and death in Indonesia.
Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies) The strain of bird flu that struck Thailand and Laos in July comes from China, said the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Yesterday FAO said one outbreak in July in the northern Thai province of Phichit was caused by the same strain of the H5N1 virus that had been appearing in the region since late 2003. But other outbreaks, specifically in the Thai province of Nakhon Phanom and near the Laotian capital, Vientiane, were caused by a strain that first appeared in China and was never seen in those regions before.
From Bangkok, FAO said: "The virus is similar to recent isolates from southern China, suggesting that the virus spread from China to Thailand and Laos. Poultry trade across borders is continuing in Southeast and East Asia despite well-known risks [of infection] to the governments and people in the region."
He Changchui, FAO representative for Asia, spoke of "another critical juncture of fighting against the bird flu situation in the region". He said: "Poorer countries still need long-term work and for that long-term funding is an absolute necessity."
From Beijing, Mao Qunan, Ministry of Health spokesman, said the hypothesis that the viral strain had spread from China to other states was "groundless". "Detecting and identifying the origin of a kind of new virus is a long-term scientific and technological project," Mao said. "This suggestion was made with some kind of political motive. It has denigrated China and shifted all responsibility to China... We can make a comparison - since the HIV/Aids virus was first discovered in the US, can we say that all the HIV/Aids patients got the virus from the US?"
But Mao did not deny the existence of an official poultry trade between China and the other countries, something FAO has been denouncing for months. In May 2005, researchers had already said they found in Vietnam a viral strain that was new to the country but common in the Chinese region of Guangxi, separated from Vietnam by the Lang Son Mountains.
It has been feared for some time that outbreaks in China are more widespread than official figures allow. One fact that recently came to light is that a 24-year-old man died in China of bird flu in November 2003, that is, before all the other infections in Asia throughout the epidemic that started at the end of 2003.
Meanwhile, on 14 August, a fresh outbreak of bird flu was confirmed in Changsha, Hunan province. A total of 1,805 ducklings died and around 217,000 ducks were culled to contain the infection. And it was confirmed that a 62-year-old farmer who died in Xinjiang on 12 July had bird flu: he is number 14 in China's official toll of victims of the disease.
Indonesia:The 45th death from bird flu was confirmed yesterday: a nine-year-old girl from Garut district, western Java, from where a 17-year-old infected boy also came. Tests are under way as an outbreak in the region is feared.
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