THAILAND: New Reports of Bird Flu Bring Bad Tidings for Premier

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 17 2004 (IPS) - In the Year of the Monkey, the rooster was hailed as a sign of glad tidings for those born in the Year of the Ox, like Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

But such a prediction – ”Of all the 12 signs, the colourful Rooster will bring sunshine into the Ox’s orderly life” – has hardly lived up to its promise in the first month since the new lunar new year dawned, on Jan. 22.

This is because dead chickens – given the bird flu in Asia – have forced a once confident Thaksin to go on the defensive. Even the whiff of good fortune that came Bangkok’s way – that the country may have triumphed over the rampaging bird flu – has been short-lived.

Government officials confirmed this week that the avian flu virus had surfaced again in nine provinces, eight of which had been under strict quarantine before for evidence of the deadly H5N1 virus and subsequently declared safe.

For Newin Chidchob, the deputy minister of agriculture, there was little doubt as to who should be on the dock for the re-emergence of bird flu in Thailand: the country’s reputed fighting cocks and their owners.

”Infected roosters smuggled out of red zones during the first outbreak and then brought back to the areas had probably re-ignited the infection,” he was quoted as having told the ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper.

This ominous sign that Thailand’s battle with bird flu was far from over came in the wake of the infection’s toll on people, particularly those who lived in close proximity to infected poultry.

Over the weekend, a 13-year-old boy from the Chaiyaphum province became the sixth Thai to die of avian influenza. On Monday a one-year-old fell ill with the deadly disease.

The human toll of 14 deaths in Vietnam has been the worst.

Sensing a possible second wave of the disease, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) sounded the alarm on Tuesday. ”The present bird flu emergency cannot be considered under control as long as new spreading and recurrence of the disease is taking place in far off places in the Asian region,” it announced in a statement.

Thailand’s slide back to being another infected country affirms the concern expressed by FAO officials last week that it was premature to start claiming victory following reports from Thai officials by Feb 9 that the country did not have a single new outbreak of bird flu. Thailand’s turn of fortunes for the worst coincides with reports that bird flu is winging its way into another region in the United States, Pennsylvania, following its appearances in Delaware and Maryland.

Japan, too, has had to contend with the flu raising its head among poultry in the country’s south-west.

The other areas that have been hit by the virus are Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan. But of these, only Pakistan and the United States have been affected by the H7 strain of the virus, while the rest are trying to contain the H5N1 strain, which is the deadlier of the two.

This week’s bad news for Thailand only adds to the mounting economic cost that faces the Thaksin administration. According to Tuesday’s ‘The Nation’ newspaper, the tourism and restaurant sectors have been hit in addition to the more obvious poultry sector, animal feed sector, slaughterhouses and exports.

To contain the spread of the disease – which is transmitted through the air and is released in nasal secretions and the faeces of infected birds – Thailand has slaughtered more than 30 million chickens.

But that has not stopped the calls for blood in some quarters here, given that a month ago, the Thaksin administration kept up the pretence that the country was free of the bird flu virus. That, too, after the Thai media were reporting the deaths of chickens in the hundreds of thousands in rural poultry farms.

Typical among the government’s defenders were Chidchob, the deputy minister, who was quoted in the ‘Bangkok Post’ of Jan. 15 as having said: ”A report that poultry farms have been contaminated with bird flu disease is groundless.”

”The rumour may have been spread by our competitors who want to ravage the (Thai) poultry export industry, which has a bright market opportunity since the bird flu outbreak hit many Asian countries,” he added.

As the world’s fourth largest exporter of chickens, Thailand shipped close to 540,000 metric tonnes of chicken meat, valued at 1.25 billion U.S. dollars, to its foreign markets last year. As Thailand approaches the first month’s anniversary since Bangkok finally confessed -on Jan. 23 – to bird flu’s presence in the local poultry stock, editorial writers have been turning up the heat on Thaksin.

”According to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, government action was delayed by the slow progress in identifying the cause of death of hundreds of thousands of chickens,” declared a recent editorial in the Thai-language daily ‘Matichon.’ ”His explanation only serves to show the government’s carelessness and ignorance.”

‘Matichon’s’ call for ”someone (to) be held responsible for the gross negligence” was echoed Monday in the halls of the Thai Senate, where Thaksin made a rare appearance to defend his government’s handling of the bird flu.

”He boasted about the effect the government measures were having against the avian influenza,” reported Tuesday’s ‘Bangkok Post.’

However, such bravado was not on display when time came for the prime minister to face a battery of questions from concerned senators. He left before being grilled.