Bangkok: New outbreaks of bird flu in Thailand and Laos are fanning fears the disease is flaring up again in Asia, although concerns the virus was mutating in Indonesia have subsided.
Vietnam, where the H5N1 virus has killed 42 people, worried it would be the next country to see a re-emergence of the disease after a seven-month lull. And there were signs yesterday bird flu may be spreading into central Thailand after outbreaks in the north and northeast exposed weaknesses in the country's defences against a virus known to have killed 134 people.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation urged governments to be vigilant against a virus still circulating in poultry three years after it swept across much of Asia.
"Countries in the region are doing their best, but there are limited resources available where animal health surveillance is concerned," FAO spokeswoman Aphaluk Bhatiasevi told Reuters.
But concerns about a cluster of human cases in Indonesia eased after preliminary tests cleared six people in the province of North Sumatra of bird flu.
The group lived in the same district where as many as seven members of an extended family died from bird flu in May, but tests showed they had common human flu.
Such cases fan fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between people, even though there is no evidence that it has happened yet.
Indonesia, where the virus has killed another 42 people, has been criticised for not doing enough to fight the disease endemic in birds in about two-thirds of the country's provinces.
The government has shunned mass culling, citing a lack of money for compensation and impracticality in a country with millions of backyard fowl.
In Vietnam, where the government has fought the virus by vaccinating millions of birds, officials said a failure to control its waterfowl made it vulnerable.
Ducks, which can be silent carriers of the virus, and other waterfowl had doubled to more than eight million since February.
