Bird Flu Reported in Pakistan, Laos

Officials in Pakistan and Laos reported outbreaks of bird flu among chickens Monday, bringing to nine the number of countries reporting infections, and media in Thailand said a second person there had died.

Pakistan said 1.5 million chickens in the country had died from a strain of bird flu different from the one blamed for recent human fatalities.

In Laos, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said, “We sent samples to Hanoi for testing and we have received the result that it is [bird flu], but we don’t know the strain.”

The flu has triggered mass slaughter of chickens across Asia, and the number of confirmed human fatalities rose to eight Monday when Thailand said two 6-year-old boys had died.

The Thai government was awaiting test results to determine whether five other deaths were caused by avian flu, as suspected. Six people have died of the disease in Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Indonesian authorities said that meat from the 3.8 million chickens slated for slaughter in East Java province will be allowed onto the market for consumption.

The World Health Organization has said that there is no evidence yet that the disease can spread to humans through contaminated food, but it is doing further research.

The WHO said the search for a vaccine had been set back because the virus had mutated.

Scientists believe people get the disease through contact with sick birds. Although there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, health officials are concerned the disease might combine with regular influenza to create a disease that could trigger a human flu pandemic.

Asian governments have killed chickens in a desperate bid to contain the disease, with Thailand slaughtering about 10 million of the fowl and Vietnam more than 3 million.

The outbreak has devastated Thailand’s chicken export industry -- the world’s fourth-largest -- which shipped about 500,000 tons of chicken worth $1.3 billion in 2003. Japan and the European Union have banned its poultry products.

The nine countries reporting bird flu are Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.