Thailand's government Tuesday declared 29 provinces bird flu emergency zones, a move that will allow it to more easily make payments to farmers whose birds are slaughtered.

The move, approved at Tuesday's weekly cabinet meeting, came in the wake of several new outbreaks of the deadly H5N1 virus among poultry and two human fatalities the first in more than eight months.

Provincial governors and agriculture, livestock and health volunteers will go to farms and households in the 29 provinces this week "to look for anyone with respiratory illness, register poultry, spray anti-bacterial chemicals in the area where poultry are raised and spread information" about bird flu, said government spokesman Suraphong Suebwonglee.

"This will be simultaneously done in the 29 provinces where bird flu has ever been found in recent years," he said.

By declaring the provinces disaster zones, the government is allowed to use a special budget to compensate farmers whose birds are slaughtered as a precautionary measure against the disease.

A mass slaughter is the main standard procedure recommended by experts such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization to control the spread of the virus.

Under the government's latest policy, officials have been ordered to slaughter poultry within a one-kilometer radius of any area where birds are dying in unusual circumstances, without having to wait for lab results of tests for bird flu, Suraphong said. The only exception is "up-to-standard" farms.

Indonesian teenager dies

An Indonesian teenager died of bird flu Tuesday, local testing indicated, the second fatality in as many days. If confirmed, the latest death lifts the country's human deaths from H5N1 to 44.

The Health Ministry said 16-year-old Okky Jelina died at the regional Sari Asih hospital in Tangerang, west of Jakarta. She was admitted on August 4, but died before she could be transferred to the capital for specialist treatment.

A day earlier, a boy of the same age died of the H5N1 strain of the virus on the other side of the city.

(China Daily August 9, 2006)