Chinese produced H5N1 vaccine.

Tough new penalties to combat bird flu

By Suzanne Nam

02 August 2006

Caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra yesterday announced new, harsh rules for farmers who fail to report suspicious poultry deaths. Fines and prison sentences will deter people from becoming complacent in the face of renewed threats from the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, Thaksin said.

“The main problem now is that poultry owners are reluctant to report deaths for fear that officials will order the culling of all of their poultry,” he said. The stricter measures will motivate people to report suspicious poultry deaths to authorities, Thaksin said.

The penalties for those who fail to report suspicious poultry deaths within 12 hours include fines of up to 4,000 baht and two-month prison sentences, and were put in place earlier this week by Agriculture and Cooperatives Minister Khunying Sudarat Keyuraphan.

The new penalties follow the death of a 17-year-old man, who reportedly raised fighting cocks, and bird flu outbreaks in Phichit province, in the lower North, and Nakhon Phanom province, in the Northeast. Thailand had not suffered any human or animal cases for more than seven months before the resurgence of avian flu was announced last week.

Neighboring Laos last week also reported a reemergence of the disease, which health officials say is more likely to occur during the rainy season. Officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization said a farm in Vientiane reported the deaths of thousands of chickens from bird flu in late June.

Some ministry officials linked the outbreak in the border province of Nakhon Phanom to infected egg trays from Laos. That outbreak involved more than 70 farms in Thailand and resulted in the slaughter of thousands of birds at the weekend.

Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon yesterday played down any conflict between the two countries over the issue.

“It is not a matter for Thailand to consider where the recent outbreak of bird flu came from, rather it is something for both countries to resolve to the best of their ability and in a transparent manner… the Thai government is prepared and equipped with the necessary manpower and equipment to assist all of its neighbors,” he said in a statement.

Although Thailand’s public health and agriculture ministries have received international recognition for their bird flu prevention and monitoring programs, which include using thousands of community volunteers to watch for sick birds and people and having a special liaison in every province responsible for quickly reporting potential outbreaks, officials acknowledged in July that they may be flawed.

Just a week before the outbreak, in Phichit province, Sudarat said she believed that people were becoming complacent about the threat of bird flu and many had stopped following the advice of health and agriculture officials on the handling of sick or dead birds.

Many were also failing to report suspicious poultry deaths to authorities, she said.

Thai Day