New bird flu outbreak in Ang Thong

Thailand Thursday confirmed its third bird flu outbreak this year among household chickens in the central province of Ang Thong, near the ancient capital of Ayutthaya.

Bureau of Livestock Disease Control Director Nirandorn Uangtrakulsuk said lab tests had confirmed the H5N1 strain of avian influenza among the free range chickens, six of which had recently died.The bureau ordered the remaining ten chickens in the household compound and all poultry within a 200-metre radius of the house to be culled on Wednesday.

It was the third case of bird flu detected in Thailand this year. The two former outbreaks were also at small free range chicken farms.So far there have been no reports of an H5N1 outbreak at a commercial-scale chicken or duck farm in Thailand this year.The two other outbreaks were reported at a farm in Nong Khai, 480 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, and among domesticated ducks in Phitsanulok province, northern Thailand, last month.

The official Thai News Agency reported that Thailand, Laos and Cambodia held talks in Bangkok on how to implement more efficient monitoring of avian influenza, as well as other communicable diseases.Their "Joint Action Programmes on Communicable Disease Control on the Thai-Cambodian and Thai-Lao Borders" reviewed the current procedures along common borders.

Officials sat in from the World Health Organisation, the Kenan Institute Asia, Japan International Cooperation Agency and the United Nations Aids programme.Thailand, where 17 people have died after contracting the H5N1 virus from domesticated fowl since the epidemic was first detected in the kingdom in 2003, is one of the few H5N1-affected countries to have refused to introduce a vaccination program among its commercial chickens farms.The government recently announced plans to use vaccinations among poultry should the kingdom suffer another major outbreak of the poultry virus.The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is generally in favour of vaccination programs as a means of containing the poultry plague, although experts admit an anti-avian influenza programs can work without vaccinating if handled correctly.

The first wave of avian influenza swept Asia in 2003 and 2004, then spread to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2005 to 2006.This year new outbreaks of bird flu in Asia have been reported in China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

Outside of Asia, avian influenza outbreaks have only been detected in Egypt and Nigeria so far this year.

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