A Health worker disinfects a chicken farm and its surrounding area in Bang Mun Nak district yesterday.

Livestock and health officials yesterday turned the spotlight on the family whose chickens tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus in the first confirmed infection of bird flu in Thailand this year.

Chumporn Khoomsrog, 54, and three members of his family were placed under close observation for any signs of avian flu, such as fever.

Starting yesterday, one day after the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives announced it had detected the H5N1 strain in samples taken from Chumporn's dead chicken, the observation programme will take 22 days.

The family have not yet had blood tests for bird flu because they looked perfectly healthy to the disease-investigating team who checked them yesterday at their house in Phichit's Bang Mun Nak district.

Dr Prachak Watanakul, chief of Phichit's Public Health Office, said he had ordered a team from Bang Mun Nak Hospital to observe the family's health every day until the end of the monitoring programme.

Phichit has six patients quarantined in hospital for fear that they might have contracted bird flu, said the doctor. One is an 11-year-old girl from Bang Mun Nak.

Prachak said the girl lived in a sub-district near to Chumporn's family and had reportedly touched a dead chicken before falling ill with bird flu-like symptoms.

Previously, he said, there had been 120 cases on a watch-list, but all were removed after negative tests for avian flu.

Phichit livestock authorities are culling poultry within a five-kilometre radius of Chumporn's house.

Veterinarian Thamanoon Thongsuk said Chumporn had raised 268 fighting cocks and they started to die on July 15.

A couple of days later, livestock authorities stepped in to help bury the carcasses and took some samples for testing.

Mounting reports of poultry deaths continue to come from many areas in the lower North and upper Central regions, including Phichit. Chiang Mai livestock authorities yesterday issued a statement to suspend cock-fighting until further notice.

The Public Health Ministry said no human case of bird flu had been detected in about 20 recent cases sent for testing. The ministry has tested about 1,600 samples taken from suspected patients in 67 provinces this year.

Nirundorn Aungtrakultook, director of the Department of Livestock Development's (DLD) bureau of disease control and veterinary services, said yesterday a test confirmed that the virus found in Pichit was the H5N1 strain.

The DLD has sent a sample to the World Organisation for Animal Health's laboratory in England to test whether the virus had mutated. As part of an international agreement, specimens must be sent to the laboratory each time there is a new outbreak.

Sayan Choochum

The Nation

Phichit