Bird Flu: Weekend Update, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam Affected

Thailand has their 20th victim since 2003 diagnosed with bird flu, a woman who was cleaning chicken coops:

BANGKOK, Thailand - A woman in a northern suburb of Bangkok has been diagnosed with bird flu, Thailand's 20th victim of the disease since 2003, a health official said Monday.

The 50-year-old woman is in stable condition in Bangkok's Siriraj hospital, Deputy Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said.

The woman fell ill a day after helping clean a chicken coop, said Thawat Suntarajarn, director-general of Thailand's Department of Communicable Disease Control.

Apparently Vietnam is dropping the ball on WHO testing procedures - 2 people there who were ill with something we buried without tests. Vietnam officials are also saying they need an infusion of the dollar to both comply with WHO regulations, and also just prevent the disease from spreading; 40 people in that country have perished, making it the most bird flu affected country. Vietnam only has enough anti-viral drugs to treat 60K people, not very many when you consider there are approximately 8.2 million in that country alone.

Sunday, bird flu may have appeared again in Japan. Officials there are planning to kill 82K chickens as a result:

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- Authorities have detected signs of bird flu at a farm in northern Japan and plan to kill 82,000 chickens, local officials have said.

The farm in Ibaraki prefecture, just northeast of Tokyo, was already inside a quarantined area because of past outbreaks, Kyodo News agency reported on Monday.

CBS is also carrying the quirky bird flu report of perhaps the era with a Hong Kong lawyer proposing allowing Joe Hong Kong person on the street to carry guns and shoot whatever birds they suspect of having the disease:

In Hong Kong, lawmaker Tommy Cheung proposed allowing the public to carry guns and shoot migratory birds suspected of carrying the virus. "Perhaps what we should do is give each person a gun," said Cheung, who has a reputation for making unusual proposals, "and when we see a migrating bird, we can just shoot it down, so Hong Kong would be a much safer place."

Heh. And they thought we were the Old West gunslingers in this country. Besides, shooting those birds means they fall down, right? So if they are infected, someone handling them could get the disease.