Authority:No outbreak of hantavirus disease in Thailand

BANGKOK, September 11 ( TNA) - The Thai Ministry of Public Health's Department of Disease Control says that there has been no outbreak of the hantavirus disease in Thailand, but agencies concerned are working together to watch out against the disease. In response to reports that national park visitors in the United States were recently infected with the hantavirus, Department of Disease Control Deputy Director-General Dr Suwannachai Watthanayingcharoenchai said on Monday previously there were few patients of the disease in Thailand without any epidemic and no one has died of the disease. Dr Suwannachai acknowledged that patients of the disease were recorded in Bangkok and the western Kanchanaburi (กาญจนบุรี) Province in 1985 and there was another patient in Bangkok in 1998. According to the senior Thai health official, the transmission of the hantavirus disease is not human-to-human but animal-to-human and there has been no vaccine for the disease so far and, thus, treatment is based on patients’ symptoms. The senior Thai health official explained that the hantavirus is usually found in wild rodents, with humans getting infected by breathing particles contaminated with the infected rodents’ waste, urine and saliva or by being bitten by infected rodents. The senior official confirmed that his department is working with other agencies concerned, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives' Department of Livestock Development and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation to monitor and contain diseases which could be transmitted among humans, animals, wild animals and the environment, inlcuding the hantavirus disease.(TNA)