Thirteen orang-utans awaiting return to Indonesia after being smuggled into Thailand two years ago might have tuberculosis (TB), a veterinarian at Mahidol University said yesterday.

Results of skin tests suggest they have the disease, but Rattapan Pattanarangsan said he could not be 100-per-cent certain until he had the results of laboratory tests.

That will take about two months.

Rattapan said a second round of skin tests would be conducted today, after Tuesday's positive swabs.

The 13 orang-utans were part of a group 102 animals rescued from the private Safari World zoo two years ago. Fifty-three of them, including the 13 apes, had been smuggled from Indonesia.

The National Park, Wildlife and Plant Variety Conservation Department recently said it would send them back to Indonesia. The first shipment was scheduled for early next month.

Rattapan said if the lab tests confirmed the 13 orang-utans had TB, they wouldn't be going anywhere, unless the Indonesian government issued a letter stating it was willing to receive the infected apes.

Rattapan said the apes were not showing symptoms of any disease. The check-up suggesting the apes might be infected was a regular check any animal being shipped to another country would be subject to, he said.

Specimens from the lungs of all 13 orang-utans have been taken. All of the 53 smuggled animals are now being kept at the Khao Pratap Chang Wildlife Rescue Centre in Ratchaburi. Pornchai Patumrattapan, head of the rescue centre, said he was told about the initial skin tests on Tuesday and the 13 orang-utans were immediately isolated.

Rattapan said there were many ways the apes could have become infected with TB - in the jungle from where they came, while they were being smuggled and were weak, or from being around humans.

An expert on infectious diseases at Chulalongkorn Hospital, who asked not to be named, said if the lab tests confirmed the apes were infected with TB, it was most likely humans had given them the disease, because TB was generally transferred from humans to animals, not the other way round.

"Skin tests could give false-positive results, because they can be influenced by other bacteria, not TB," said the source.

Edwin Wiek, director of Wildlife Friends of Thailand and a representative of the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation (BOSF), said he wanted the apes to be sent to Indonesia as soon as possible.

He said the apes would be well taken care of at the BOSF rehabilitation centre in Nyaru Menteng, Central Kalimantan, now home to 650 orang-utans.

Pennapa Hongthong

The Nation