BANGKOK, 25 January 2004 — Thailand’s government was accused yesterday of covering-up the bird flu outbreak here and responding too slowly to the crisis, as a sixth death from the virus occurred in Vietnam.

The death of a 13-year-old boy from the H5N1 virus in Ho Chi Minh City was confirmed yesterday, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Health Department Nguyen The Dung said.

The unnamed teenager’s death on Thursday marked the first from avian influenza in southern Vietnam, the five previous victims all from northern provinces. An eight-year-old girl from Ho Chi Minh City has also tested positive for H5N1 and is in a critical condition.

Two sisters died Thursday from severe respiratory illnesses in Hanoi that were suspected bird flu cases, while 17 other suspected cases were being monitored at hospitals in the capital.

The Thai government, meanwhile, came under fire for its handling of the outbreak, which after weeks of denials it confirmed Friday had spread here with two confirmed human cases and the detection of the virus in chickens.

Thai medical authorities also announced Friday the first death of a person suspected to have contracted the disease.

“The livelihood and health safety of hundreds of thousands of farmers and workers in the poultry industry stands in jeopardy, due to the failure of timely and prompt identification and action against the outbreak,” the Bangkok Post said. “The government’s efforts to sweep the problem under the carpet has exploded in its face, leaving the poultry industry in tatters and the very safety of the public in jeopardy.”

Witoon Lianchamroon, director of agricultural activist group Biothai, said the Thai public demanded an explanation from the government about why it had taken so long to inform them of the health risks.

“The people have questions. What happened with the investigation process in this country? We have to make the people in this country, and outside, have more confidence in the process of biosafety in Thailand,” he said.

Government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair repeated Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s denials that the government had known the virus was here before Friday and had instead said the disease that was killing chickens was fowl cholera.

“Extra measures were put in place to cope with cholera, but that doesn’t mean the government thought it was bird flu,” he told reporters.

Cambodia, which became the sixth nation to report an outbreak of bird flu on Friday, warned that it may face a larger crisis as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the country lacked experts to help battle any spread.

Thailand, meanwhile, announced that it would host a half-day ministerial meeting in Bangkok on Wednesday, to which it has invited affected countries, importing countries and international experts.

Thaksin said that the government had pulled out all the stops to fight the outbreak as mass cullings continued in the worst hit Suphan Buri province.

“Every party concerned is working very hard,” he said during his weekly radio address. “This crisis is temporary and will be resolved within 30 days.”

Some 500 soldiers were brought into the province to help cull chickens at 400 farms, Deputy Agriculture Minister Newin Chidchob said. The epidemic has led to the slaughter or deaths of up to seven million chickens in Thailand, more than 2.5 million in Vietnam, nearly two million in South Korea, 55,000 in Taiwan and 35,000 in Japan.

The confirmation of the outbreak has thrown Thailand’s $1.2 billion poultry export industry into turmoil, with the country’s top two poultry buyers, Japan and the European Union, already banning products from the kingdom. Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea also yesterday halted poultry imports from the kingdom, joining the Philippines, Hong Kong and Bangladesh.

The World Health Organization on Friday urged countries with outbreaks of bird flu to prevent the virus taking a deadlier hold on humans by quickly slaughtering chickens affected by the disease.

The UN health agency has warned that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu could merge with a human influenza virus to create a deadlier and infectious virus sub-type capable of human-to-human transmission.