Thai officials take sample for bird flu test. (Reuters)

BANGKOK, October 20, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Bird flu has killed a 48-year-old man in Thailand, the country's first human death in a year, bringing to 13 the human death toll in the country as fears grew over a global influenza pandemic with reports of new outbreaks in Asian and European countries.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Thursday, October 20, that the victim appeared to have contracted the virus after slaughtering and eating an infected bird in Kanchanaburi province, which has recently reported new outbreaks of the avian influenza strain in birds, Reuters reported.

"The guy was infected with bird flu because he took a sick chicken, slaughtered it and then ate it," Thaksin said.

Thai health officials said more tests were needed before the latest fatality could be confirmed as the country's 13th official victim.

"The first lab results came out negative but we tested it several times and it confirmed it was positive," Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general at the Department of Disease Control told Reuters.

Experts fear that the bird flu – of which the deadly H5N1 is a variant -- could mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus, unleashing a global pandemic of killer flu.

The H5N1 strain, which first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997, re-emerged in 2003 in South Korea, and has spread to Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Russia and Europe.

More than 60 people have died from the virus in Asia, including 41 in Vietnam, the worst-affected country.

The World Health Organization says southeast Asia is the most likely epicenter of any human pandemic, which will probably stem from a mutation of the virus that makes it easily transmittable between people.

Fears of a global influenza pandemic have grown after reports of outbreaks of the virus in both China and Russia, Agence France Presse (AFP) said.

China reported Wednesday its first outbreak of bird flu in more than two months on a farm near the Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, saying that the virus was the H5N1 strain.

According to China's ministry of agriculture in a filing to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), some 91,100 birds in total have been culled as a result.

China's announcement of its first reported bird flu case has triggered WHO concerns.

"In any new outbreak, in any new case, any new location, it's a concern to us, because it increases the possibility of humans at risk," WHO spokeswoman in Beijing Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told AFP.

She said that China, despite the latest outbreak, has not reported any human cases of infection.

Bhatiasevi urged more measures to be taken on the local level to contain any new outbreaks of the virus.

"We believe there is a need for further capacity building and strengthening the surveillance system at the local level ... what needs to be done is the implementation process and the surveillance to take place in the field."

She stressed that Chinese officials have taken a number of measures to control the outbreak, including imposing a quarantine around the farm, and destroying birds within a three-kilometer (1.86-mile) radius.

In Moscow, Russia's agriculture ministry said H5N1 virus – already detected in Siberia in summer -- had been discovered in the province of Tula, west of Ural mountains, apparently borne by wild ducks.

The announcement marks the first time the virus has arrived west of the Urals in Russia.

Russian authorities have culled hundreds of thousands of fowl and imposed numerous quarantines in an effort to wipe out the virus.

And in Vietnam, authorities have started culling ducks in Mekong Delta this week following the detection of the country's first outbreak in poultry since June.

"We have just slaughtered and buried all the 180 ducks after tests showed they had the bird flu virus," Nguyen Van Giam, chairman of the People's Committee in Ninh Quoi A commune, where the virus was first detected in 2004, told Reuters.

Vietnam has been vaccinating millions of poultry nationwide to prevent outbreaks in its "winter" season -- which runs from November to January -- when the virus appears to thrive.