The village of Ban Sri Somboon used to be a riot of flashing feathers and raucous squawks, with more than 1,200 chickens, ducks and pigeons strutting the hot, dusty streets, scavenging for food. Yet today, there is not a solitary winged creature to be seen. An eerie silence descended on the village last September when health officials dug a huge grave in a clearing behind the rickety wooden houses, herded every last bird into it, and then - to the horror of their watching owners - buried them alive. This was the Thai government's typically brusque response to the death of 11-year-old Sakuntala Premphasri, who is believed to be the first person to have passed the avian or virus to another human - her mother, Pranee, 35, who also died.
If a devastating bird-flu pandemic really is to sweep the globe, killing millions, as experts fear, history may record that it was in this isolated community of 600 peasant-farmers, a five-hour drive north of Bangkok, that the disease - previously passed only via infected poultry - broke through the final barrier of human-to-human transmission. Doubtless, the showcase mass burial was designed to remind the world that Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was tackling the crisis in the most ruthlessly efficient manner.
The truth, however, is very different, as was discovered when Sakuntala's aunt, Pranom was interviewed - who also fell ill, and who is among the few survivors of a disease that has a 70 per cent mortality rate. In fact, chickens had been dying in the village for months. Yet, although there had been bird flu outbreaks nearby, and the birds' symptoms (an unsteady gait, a croaking cough and darkening of the face) had never been seen before, their sickness was assumed to be cholera.............
