The epidemic of bird flu in south-east Asia has spread to Pakistan, with senior officials revealing on Monday that the virus has killed millions of chickens in the port city of Karachi in recent weeks.
A six-year-old Thai boy died of the disease in Bangkok on Monday, raising the epidemic’s confirmed human death toll to seven. Thai officials said yesterday that another five deaths were being treated as suspected cases of the virus.
With Laos also reporting possible cases of the virus among chickens on Monday, the World Health Organisation said efforts to find a vaccine were being frustrated by the ”historically unprecedented” rate at which the virus was spreading and mutating.
”This is now spreading too quickly for anybody to ignore it,” said WHO spokesperson Peter Cordingley in Manila. ”We don’t know how this virus is spreading, so it’s safe to presume that nowhere can consider itself safe.”
People can only be infected by the virus through contact with sick birds. But scientists are worried that it could yet mutate into a form able to pass between people, triggering the next human flu pandemic.
Between 1,5-million and 3,5-million chickens have died of the virus in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, according to varying reports on Monday.
Manzoor Panwar, minister for livestock in southern Sindh province, said bird flu had been detected in between 10% and 25% of the province’s chickens. ”We have started providing vaccines to all poultry in Sindh to prevent further outbreaks and have told affected farms to destroy all their infected chickens.”
Panwar said the disease was confirmed ”two, three days” ago. ”The situation is almost under control,” he said, Poultry farmers have been told to bury infected birds. He said at least 20 to 30 big farms in Karachi have been hit by the disease, but it has not spread to other parts of the country.
According to another senior official, Pakistan is seeing strains of the virus that cannot be passed to people. ”We have confirmed this. The strain that jumps to humans is not in them,” said Rafaqat Hussain Rajam, Pakistan’s federal commissioner for livestock husbandry. ”This sticks to birds only.” But, according to the WHO, the strains reported in Pakistan can cause illness in humans, though they are different from the virulent H5N1strain that killed six people in Vietnam and possibly six more in Thailand.
Pakistan is the first south Asian country to be infected by the latest epidemic, and the ninth country in all.
Captan Boonmanut, the six-year-old Thai boy who died of the virus early yesterday, was the first confirmed fatality outside Vietnam.
Captan’s father, Thamnan Boonmanut accused the government of failing to warn people of the risk of infection.
Thailand has had 10 suspected cases of the virus, of whom five have already died.
The Thai government has been accused of suppressing news of the virus for three months, though it denies the charge.
Indonesia, where up to 20-million chickens are reported to have died from — or been culled because of — the disease, has also been accused of suppressing news of its spread. – Guardian Unlimited Â