Thais Mess Up Bird Flu Tests, Ask For U.s. Help

[george]

Thais mess up bird flu tests, ask for U.S. help

BANGKOK, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Thailand enlisted the help of Australia and the United States on Friday to conduct complicated scientific tests for human bird flu, admitting it had messed up its own tests on suspected victims.

Thailand, the worst hit of 10 countries where bird flu has broken out, has seen three confirmed human cases of the deadly virus, of whom two have died.

Tests at a Thai government laboratory which should have shown whether 12 more suspected human victims had the flu had been unsuccessful, officials said. Seven of the suspected victims have died.

"The results are not conclusive partly due to improper methods of collecting tissues and samples," said Suphan Srithamma, a senior Health Ministry official in Thailand, which this week admitted to a "screw up" over its handling of the wider bird flu crisis.

"Not enough samples have been collected," he said. "We will have to send samples to the WHO's lab in Australia and the U.S. CDC for further testing," he said, referring to the World Health Organisation and the Centers for Disease Control.

World health officials are anxious to pin down exactly how many cases have hit humans to get a better idea of whether they are looking at a few isolated cases, or the seeds of a possible global flu pandemic to rival last year's SARS crisis.

So far the virus is only thought to have jumped from poultry to people, rather than from person to person.

Confusion over testing for the virus has also been a problem in Vietnam, where the WHO has confirmed six people have died of the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Vietnam's state-run media quote Health Ministry figures ranging from 10 and 19 confirmed human bird flu cases. The WHO says that in addition to the six dead, it has confirmed only two other human cases in the country.

The fact the bird flu has struck in impoverished countries such as Cambodia and Laos, which have little to no public or animal health infrastructure, has not helped track its spread. Samples from Cambodian chickens went to a lab at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

--Reuters 2004-01-30

[Guest IT Manager]

OMG I am soooooooooo surprised..

[castelleone]

At this stage I do have a problem to remain optimistic. I am really afraid to get more and more bad news in the near future about this matter. And I still cannot get the PM at the chicken roundtable out of my mind. Now they can`t even deal with the tests. What a danger for all of us! I am not being sarcastic, I am worried.

[george]

Thais not lapping up Thaksin's chicken stunt

They still do not believe it is safe to eat the country's poultry

BANGKOK - Thais seem less than convinced by the government's campaign to get them eating chicken again - with most of them unimpressed by the public relations efforts of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his ministers.

Results of two opinion polls conducted over the weekend showed the public is staying away from chicken, the Bangkok Post reported.

Mr Thaksin and his Cabinet ministers kicked off the campaign by eating chicken at a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet before a throng of photographers on Saturday.

One of the polls found that despite seeing Mr Thaksin down three pieces of chicken and a boiled egg, about 48 per cent of 1,348 respondents still do not dare to follow suit.

Another 40.5 per cent said they were not impressed because they believed the chicken Mr Thaksin ate was safely selected for him.

Just under 12 per cent said they would now dare to eat chicken.

Some 88 per cent of respondents said they were eating much less chicken than before.

The Thai government is confident of containing the bird flu epidemic within two months.

But it is concerned the poultry industry could be in ruins by then if people are not drawn back to eating chicken meat and eggs.

Critics say the administration lied about the existence of the bird flu and argue this is one reason people do not believe what the government tells them now.

The government has dismissed these arguments.

At another exercise this weekend, a free pop concert and chicken-cooking and eating session will be staged at Bangkok's Sanam Luang park, with Mr Thaksin scheduled to be one of the cooks.

--Agencies 2004-02-02

[dr_Pat_Pong]

Who is gonna go to Phuket for the B I G Chickenfest being organized by the Phuket Town Council to prove that eating chicken is safe. The Governor has had all the tests done and Phuket is Avian 'flu free.