Losing battle: The illegal movement of infected poultry, especially fighting cocks and ducks, has helped spread the bird flu virus to seven provinces in Thailand, officials announced on Wednesday Nov, 2, 2005.
In the latest outbreak of the H5N1 virus, which has killed 13 Thais, laboratory results confirmed the virus in chickens and pigeons in the central province of Ang Thong, the Department of Livestock Department said on its Web site,
Six of the seven infected provinces were clustered in central Thailand, with the other, Kalasin, in the northeast, where fighting cocks might have caught the deadly disease from those in the infected central region, livestock officials said.
“Kalasin, which had outbreaks last year [2004] from fighting cocks, is very far from the infected central region,” Livestock Department chief Yukol Limlaemthong said.
Despite a monitoring system involving 1 million volunteers who educate farmers and villagers with backyard flocks about the virus and alert officials in cases of suspicious deaths, illegal movements are hard to stop, he said.
Yukol said fighting cocks can sell for 100,000 baht [US $2,450].
He estimated there were around one million fighting cocks in Thailand, 300 000 of them involved in fights regularly, but only 40 000 had been registered and issued with a “passport,” which must be shown to officials when they are moved.
Fighting cocks and ducks are more resilient to the virus than farmed chickens and could pass on the disease without showing symptoms, Yukol said.
The H5N1 virus has killed 62 people and infected 122 in four Asian countries since the virus resurfaced in Asia in late 2003.
The World Health Organization has said the H5N1 strain is endemic in poultry across much of Asia, and it could only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.
