Published on November 09, 2005 - Officials weigh up move, but some fear it could create a greater threat

Agriculture Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan is expected to soon make a decision on whether the authorities should start vaccinating poultry against avian influenza in high-risk areas to prevent a full-blown outbreak of the pathogenic disease.

Speaking to the press yesterday after a meeting of academics as well as livestock and public-health officials, Dr Jaral Trinvuthipong, vice minister for Agriculture, said he would provide information to Sudarat so that she could formulate a policy on the issue.

Jaral said the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation had recommended that fowl and poultry be vaccinated against avian influenza only in case of an uncontrollable outbreak of the disease. International health experts fear that inoculated populations of birds might become undetectable carriers of the highly pathogenic disease, but they generally agree that the extent of infection in poultry has not yet reached a critical point.

“If necessary, the government will be ready to employ the vaccine at areas where an outbreak is getting out of hand,” Jaral said.

He added that health officials would also use the bird-flu vaccine if academic studies proved vaccination to be more than 90 per cent effective in eradicating the virus in poultry.

Yukol Limlamtong, director-general of the Livestock Development Department, cautioned that the effectiveness of the vaccine remained in doubt. He said his department would continue to strictly oppose any vaccination.

“Will supporters of the vaccine be ready to take responsibility if its use results in a more serious outbreak, or a more virulent strain?” he said.

In a related development, two more people, including a three-year-old boy, were placed under close medical surveillance yesterday in Phichit after they developed bird flu-like symptoms. Both patients come from neighbourhoods where birds have died en masse in suspicious circumstances.

“We are waiting for the results of laboratory test [expected to be known within a week] indicating if they have caught bird flu,” Dr Sunee Thirakarunwong, director of Phichit Hospital, said.

Also yesterday, Trang Governor Cherdphan na Songkhla reminded officials that all fighting cocks in the province must be issued passports by November 15 in order to enable officials to track the feathered pugilists in case of disease. “It’s a measure to control the outbreak of bird-flu,” the governor said.

In Samut Prakan, the provincial livestock office will issue healthy fighting cocks with passports between 9am and 12am.

Meanwhile, lab tests have shown that pigeons at Sanam Luang in Bangkok had no bird flu. “We caught 98 pigeons from the area for tests on October 27,” said Dr Schwann Tunhikorn, deputy director-general of the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department.

He added that random tests had also indicated that no migratory birds had caught the disease.