A man (48) has died after eating his neighbour's sick chickens to become the 13th person confirmed to have died from bird flu in Thailand.
Initially, authorities said the man, who died yesterday, had tested negative for the virus. But Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra today said new lab results confirmed the bird flu diagnosis.
The director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control
The man was admitted to hospital with pneumonia-like symptoms on Sunday, shortly after he cooked and ate his neighbour's chickens. Officials said the birds had died of abnormal causes but were not tested for bird flu.
Other chickens in the village in the Phanom Thuan district of Kanchanaburi province tested positive for bird flu.
The man's seven-year-old son, who also had contact with the chickens, is in hospital in Bangkok with a fever and lung infection and is suspected of having bird flu.
"The people in this area should have known better," Dr Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control, said. "They took sickly chickens and killed and ate them. This is extremely dangerous."
The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003.
Thailand's last previous human bird flu fatality was on October 8th. Most human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds. But health officials warn the virus could mutate into a form that can be easily passed between humans, possibly triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions.
European Union veterinary experts were today holding talks in Brussels to assess whether the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain was spreading further across Europe.
Fears have grown in the past week after cases of the H5N1 strain were confirmed in birds from Romania, Turkey and Russia. Bird flu has also been confirmed in Greece, but it is not yet known if this is the dangerous H5N1 strain.
Macedonia sent suspected bird flu samples for further testing to EU laboratories.