BANGKOK: A spell of good fortune that southeast Asia’s poorest country enjoyed for three years ran out this month. Laos has become the 11th country in the world to record a human death from the bird flu virus.
The reaction from Vientiane, soon after the death of a 15-year-old girl from a suburb of the Laotian capital, suggests that this fatality may not be the last, since the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus is reported in four areas, and spreading.
“The government is enforcing immediate and stringent interventions such as culling of all infected poultry, strengthening hospital surveillance and carrying out intensive information campaigns to educate people,” Health Minister Dr Ponmek Dalaloy said on Thursday.
To achieve that, the government in the one-party communist state announced a list of preventive measures. It urged the public to wash hands regularly with soap, eat properly cooked chicken meat and avoid “any contact with sick or dead poultry” and report “any sick or dead poultry to local authorities.”
“The virus is really unpredictable. The government is doing all it can to ensure the country’s health system is prepared,” Dida Connor, spokeswoman for the WHO’s Laos and Vietnam office, said. “The existing public awareness campaigns have to be intensified.”
The teenage victim who had been hospitalised in the Thai town of Nong Khai, located on the Thai-Laos border and across Vientiane, was living in a suburb of the Laotian capital where the deadly virus had infected the poultry population in January. She died on Mar 7 after being hospitalised for 19 days.
Tests are continuing to confirm if the death of a 42-year-old Laotian woman last week was also linked to avian influenza. But while they wait for answers, public health authorities in Thai provinces that border Laos have sounded the alarm for greater vigilance, since the border is porous and is separated in some parts by the waters of the Mekong river.
“Preventive measures along the Thai-Lao border need strengthening,” Dr Itthipol Sungkhaeng, Nong Khai’s public health chief, told the state-run Thai News Agency this week. “All hospitals and health centres along the border have been instructed to closely watch their patients.”
He called for extra precautions, since the prevailing dry season in this region results in the Mekong’s water level becoming “shallower and hence more convenient for informal boat crossings.”
The other regions in land-locked Laos where the H5N1 strain of the virus have been reported include Suwanna Khet and Champasak, both towns located close to the Thai and Cambodian border. Laos is surrounded by China to the north, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west.
To date, 168 people have died due to bird flu and 275 have been infected by the virus. Till this month’s death, Laos had remained a mystery in a region that was combating a virus spreading far and wide and leading to mounting human fatalities. Vietnam has recorded 42 deaths, Thailand 17 deaths and Cambodia has seen six deaths from bird flu. South-east Asian giant Indonesia has been the worst hit with 63 human fatalities from avian influenza virus out of 81 reported cases.
Over 50 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe have had poultry populations affected by the virus since the current outbreak began in the winter of 2003.
Concerns about poverty-stricken countries like Laos having difficulty to cope with the challenges posed by this deadly virus have dogged international public and animal health experts since South-east Asia emerged as the epicentre of the H5N1 strain. After all, the WHO had warned that the virus could mutate into a flu that is easily passed between humans, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions.
The long run of luck that Laos had enjoyed stemmed from the communities in a country with a 5.4 million population being spread out over a vast rural area and having limited contact, according to the food agency. It had one bird flu outbreak in March 2004 and a second one in July 2006.
The outbreak that began in January confirms a pattern in Laos in which sick poultry are detected in places with large concentrations of people.—Dawn/The IPS News Service
