- Thailand, one of two countries at the centre of the bird
flu outbreak, is refusing to act against its spread, scuppering attempts
to stop a devastating pandemic expected to kill tens of millions of people
around the globe.
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- An emergency plan to tackle the disease, drawn up by
the country's Deputy Prime Minister, would have involved slaughtering more
than ten million ducks and chickens, and distributing face masks to protect
people from catching the flu. But it has been rejected on the grounds that
it could alarm the public.
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- The country's decision contrasts with the effective action
being taken in nearby Vietnam, the only nation to be hit harder than Thailand,
which has slowed the spread of the disease by killing 1.5 million birds
since December.
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- A ban on raising poultry came into force in the capital,
Ho Chi Minh City, last week. A major UN conference called to consider how
to combat the disease opens in the city on Wednesday. Although outbreaks
of the disease continue in Vietnam, it appears to have been beaten, at
least temporarily, in seven of the country's provinces.
-
- Twenty-nine people are so far confirmed dead in Vietnam
and 12 in Thailand, but the virus, codenamed H5N1, has yet to mutate into
a form which can spread rapidly among people. Experts agree that the best
way of preventing this is to stamp the disease out among poultry.
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- Hong Kong is thought to have averted a worldwide catastrophe
in 1997, after 18 people were affected, by slaughtering its entire poultry
population in only three days.
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- Thailand's decision not to act, the personal initiative
of its Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, marks the second time in two
months that it has failed to take life-saving action in the face of a looming
disaster. On Boxing Day, it was one of only two Indian Ocean countries
to receive an immediate warning of the tsunami. But it failed to relay
this to its coastal people or to tourists on the beaches until after long
after the wave hit. Experts suggested that the warning was delayed because
it might damage tourism.
-
- Similar charges are being made this weekend, after the
failure to act on bird flu. The Prime Minister intervened to stop the $124.7m
(£66m) plan, after the cabinet had already approved it, concerned
that it would alarm the public and other countries.
-
- The government says that it needs more information. Yesterday
it announced a two-year research programme into developing a vaccine against
the disease.
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- Flu pandemics sweep through the world three or four times
a century, and experts agree that a new one is long overdue. They happen
when new viruses emerge to which no one is immune.
-
- Most pandemics come from birds and start in China and
South-east Asia. The crucial development comes when a patient suffering
from ordinary flu also catches the bird flu, thus enabling the two viruses
to mix and create a highly infectious, deadly strain.
-
- Bird flu is causing particular alarm, since it has killed
more than three-quarters of all the people so far known to have caught
it. They have mainly contracted it directly from chickens, suggesting that
a new pandemic would surpass the last one in 1918, which killed 50 million
people worldwide. Like the 1918 strain, the disease appears to target healthy
teenagers and young adults.
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- Experts warn that because of air travel the pandemic
could reach Britain within a day of breaking out in the Far East. A drug
that can treat it, oseltamivir, already exists, and is mainly marketed
as Tamiflu. But although other countries are rushing to stockpile Tamiflu,
the Department of Health says it will make no decision before the spring.
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- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=612864
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