Anti-bird flu campaign starting in Thailand
August 8th, 2006
Nirandorn Uangtrakulsook, Thailand’s Agriculture Ministry, has announced the start of a country wide campaign which will try to stop the resurgence of the H5N1 virus, the one causing avian influenza, that has caused the death of two people in the last three weeks alone. During this week-long campaign, every house from 29 provinces will be checked by hundreds of thousands of volunteers. These will check backyard farms for sick or dead poultry and will also try to educate villagers about the disease. Any sickened or dead bird with a suspicion of bird flu infection will cause all the poultry on a one km radius to be culled. Of Thailand’s 76 provinces, more than one third are bird flu risk zones. Since the beginning of the bird flu outbreaks in Asia, late 2003, 16 Thais have died from the disease, which is now spreading to other parts of the world.