Is A Human Pandemic Next? — page 4

Rural Roulette
Stern government intervention is clearly key. But even that isn't enough to guarantee the containment of bird flu. In Asia's countryside, almost everyone raises chickens or ducks, not just poultry farmers. Livestock is such a deeply entrenched part of rural life, and animals and humans live so closely together that the prospect of viruses spreading seems almost unavoidable. Reducing that risk requires a dramatic—and unlikely—shift in the way people live.

The busy main road between the Chinese city of Nanning, capital of Guangxi, and the town of Dingdang provides a vivid illustration of the problem. The road is lined with duck farms. They are primitive, unsanitary and crowded with birds splashing around in fetid ponds, waddling through garbage—and living practically on top of the farmers who raise them. In between the farms are groupings of low-rise buildings where people and their chickens cluster around small braziers to keep warm. In Dingdang, a 35-year-old woman surnamed Luo is belatedly realizing that what were once commonplace practices may now be unacceptably dangerous. "We're all very concerned here," says Luo. "The poultry farms in the area are very unclean. If you'd come more than two days ago, before they killed all the birds, you'd have seen that the waste from the poultry farms runs into the stream where lots of people in town wash their vegetables and do their laundry."

Anton Rhychener, who represents the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Vietnam, believes that rural animal husbandry practices are at the heart of the bird-flu crisis, especially in Southeast Asia. "This was an accident waiting to happen," says Rhychener. "It's very, very difficult to control everything because there are so many family smallholdings. The region is going to have to dramatically change."

For Manop Chaomeungkrung, the problem is no longer changing how he farms but having nothing left to farm. The 38-year-old Thai stands grim-faced in the shade of a shed, watching as 15 government officials dressed in masks, shower caps, rubber gloves and boots pull his chickens from their cages and stuff them into sacks for slaughter. It takes the team just six hours to destroy what Manop has spent nine years building. "When I bought this farm, there were 1,000 birds," he says. "Yesterday I had 9,000. Today I have nothing." Manop will receive the standard compensation offered to poultry farmers by Thaksin's government, about $1 per bird. Theoretically, that's enough to allow farmers to restock. But with little income between now and whenever the quarantine is lifted, Manop expects to spend most of the compensation money simply just to support his wife and three children. Still, he says, "Maybe things will get better."

	If compensation is insufficient, farmers may resort to clandestinely selling infected animals. —HANS WAGNER,  U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official

Others may be less sanguine as they watch their livelihoods destroyed by cullings. "Compensation will be one of the key factors that will determine whether or not we stamp out these outbreaks,"

Hans Wagner, the FAO representative for Thailand, told reporters last week. "If the level of compensation is insufficient, then farmers will not carry out the culls. They may even resort to clandestinely selling the infected animals." On a duck farm on the outskirts of Nanning in China, farmer Li, 40, says he would not go to the local authorities if his birds fell ill. "Absolutely not. I'd give my ducks shots and get medicine for them. I'd nurse them back to health. The thing I'm most afraid of is that the government will come and take away my ducks."

In Ben Ya Pad, the Thai village shaken by young Kaptan's death, it's proving equally hard to change old habits. In the days after he died, Agriculture Ministry officials fanned out through the village, collecting all the chickens they could find for slaughter. But many of the birds were roosting high in the village's numerous fruit trees, residents say, and soon after the officials left, they could once again be seen strutting through the village. One hopped into a pigsty next to Kaptan's house and was scratching in the mire—a particularly alarming sight given that pigs are notorious for their ability to act as mixing vessels, carrying avian and human viruses at the same time and enabling them to exchange genetic material. The return of the birds didn't seem to disturb the villagers, even though they might be harbingers of more disease and suffering. With so many lessons unlearned, it is hard not to wonder if Kaptan died utterly and agonizingly in vain.

With reporting by Hannah Beech and Bu Hua/Shanghai, Chaim Estulin and Bryan Walsh/Hong Kong, Matthew Forney, Huang Yong and Jodi Xu/Beijing, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Susan Jakes/Dingdang, Zamira Loebis/Gunung Sindur and Andrew Perrin/Ben Ya Pad

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

	Playing Chicken [January 26, 2004] Thaksin Shinawatra's government comes clean on the extent of avian flu in Thailand On High Alert [January 19, 2004] From Japan to Vietnam, Asian countries are culling millions of chickens infected with a strain of bird flu that can also prove deadly to humans. Can they prevent a pandemic? The Cycle of Death [April 7, 2003] SARS is only the latest in a string of epidemics to emerge from southern China Hong Kong's Fowl Problem [February 15, 2002] Hong Kong's latest bird flu scare points to a lack of Chinese cooperation More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine