BANGKOK, Jan 25 (AFP) - Thailand's cabinet Tuesday approved a multi-million dollar emergency plan to deal with possible human-to-human transmissions of bird flu, after the disease killed nine people in Vietnam, officials said.
"The cabinet has endorsed the emergency plan to deal with bird flu, because the outbreak in Vietnam was very severe and many strains of the virus were found in poultry," Charal Trinvuthipong, head of the National Avian Influenza Control Center, told reporters.
The cabinet endorsed spending 4.8 billion baht (124.7 million dollars) to fight bird flu until September 2007, Chaturon Chaisang, the deputy prime minister tasked with stamping out the disease, told reporters.
"Around four billion baht will be spent on an overall strategic surveillance plan and 741 million baht is to be used on preparations," he said.
Charal told reporters that livestock and health officials still have to hammer out details on implementing the emergency plan.
"To start with, we have to prepare 150,000 doses of tamiflu, the anti-virus, as estimates show an extended outbreak could infect 50,000 to 60,000 people, but a severe outbreak could infect one million people," he said.
In announcing the plan Monday, deputy premier Chaturon had cited even more worrying estimates that the disease could kill up to two million Thais.
Charal said the contingency plan would include preparing additional hospital beds, adding that the government was also ready to convert schools and other buildings into makeshift hospitals if needed.
"Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra wants authorities to be well prepared, but does not want the public to panic. Scientists have made their estimates (about the extent of a possible outbreak), but we are taking action on bird flu," he said.
Charal said he would travel to Vietnam with Thai health and livestock officials to assess the situation there and offer help.
At least 12 people have died from avian flu in Thailand, which has gone on high alert after more outbreaks of the disease were reported this month.
Government spokesman Jakkrapob Penkair said that the outbreak remains confined to five districts in three provinces: Rayong, Phitsanulok and Nakhon Pathom.
"They have all been found outside poultry farms in locally bred chickens and no virus detection has been made in closed farms," he said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned the bird flu virus could mutate into a highly contagious human-to-human form that could trigger the next global human flu pandemic, killing up to 50 million people worldwide.
Death toll estimates from the last major flu pandemic in 1968 vary from one million to four million people killed, while estimates of the toll from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 range to well over 50 million lives lost.
01/25/2005 09:27 GMT - AFP