On Front Lines Of Asian Battle Against Bird Flu

A man takes away live ducks from a Hanoi market this month. Vietnamese scientists are working on a human vaccine against the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu. (By Nick Ut -- Associated Press)

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Prasert decided to obtain more information. He visited a Bangkok market, where farmers confided they believed it was something worse.

"They said it wasn't like fowl cholera," Prasert recounted. "If they have chickens that are sick with that, they give them tetracycline and they get better. But these chickens, by the next morning, they're all dead."

Prasert's suspicions mounted in early December when friends who usually bring him six or a dozen eggs when they visit their farm east of Bangkok came back empty-handed. "They told me the farm is usually full of chickens," he recalled, "but the chickens all died."

In mid-December, researchers privately showed Prasert results of tests done on chickens revealing that they had influenza. Prasert warned officials that urgent action was needed.

"I told them it is a public health concern and I would not close my mouth. I will talk even louder," Prasert said.

Senior ministers continued to deny the presence of bird flu throughout much of January 2004, according to Thai and international officials.

But in the first week of January, a 6-year-old boy from a province west of the capital developed a high fever, followed a week later by symptoms of severe pneumonia. The boy was admitted to Prasert's hospital, and tests on Jan. 22 came back positive for bird flu. He died three days later.

Prasert told the Health Ministry that it was too late for a coverup, he recounted with an ironic smile and narrowed eyes. The strain had reached humans.

On Jan. 23, the health and agriculture ministers announced that bird flu had arrived in Thailand.

Late Response in Indonesia

Suparno, the Indonesian government veterinarian, crouched in the cramped backyard of a farmhouse in a Central Java village, clad in a tan uniform. He slowly drew the bird flu vaccine from a plastic container into a syringe. Then his fellow animal health officers brought five black hens, one by one, from a barn. Suparno inoculated each one.

There were 20 more chickens running around the farm, but they escaped the needle.

"Too hard to catch," Suparno explained before driving off.