Thailand Travel News

Thai government has tightened precautions against Mexican swine flu at all its airports – this was announced by Public Health minister Witthaya Kaewparadai.

Thailand’s national carrier – Thai Airways International (THAI) recently announced a series of steps to prevent the flu outbreak. THAI staffs at check in counters and boarding counters have been asked to observe passengers with possible influenza symptoms. If the staff finds any passenger with possible symptoms, the suspected passenger is to be reported to the airport physician.

All incoming passengers are required to fill out a questionnaire on whether they have visited affected countries and further they have to pass through the thermal scanners on arrival.

The public health minister has told that the health ministry presently has a stockpile of 320,000 courses of the anti viral drug – oseltamivir, which could treat 320,000 people. In addition, Government Pharmaceutical Organisation has been asked to produce another 100,000 courses as a precautionary measure in case of emergency.

Meanwhile the Thai embassy has contacted all the Thai nationals registered with Thai embassy in Mexico and they were reported healthy. There are also other Thai nationals living in Mexico who are not registered with the Thai embassy.

In other news, Thailand will hold a special ASEAN health ministers meeting in Bangkok on May 7th and 8th to address the swine flu.

Asian leaders were reassured by the Thailand government that the next ASEAN summit to be held in Phuket next month would not end in chaos as an earlier meeting did in April.

The summit was abruptly cancelled last month after anti-government carried out huge demonstrations at the venue in the coastal city of Pattaya. Abhisit Vejjajiva has said that the summit would be rescheduled in June to continue the dialogue to address the issue of global economic slump and its impact on ASEAN region.

Suthep, the deputy Prime Minister who is in charge of the security has said that the government is taking stringent steps to ensure that the next summit would be held peacefully without any issue. He further added that Ministry of Defence has been assigned the responsibility of guaranteeing the security of the ASEAN leaders and diplomats.

The military would be fully responsible for the security of the ASEAN leaders and Asia-Pacific dialogue partners where as the Police would supplement the efforts of the army.

Representatives of ASEAN countries, India, China, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Japan were invited by the Thailand foreign ministry for consultation over the meeting date and security arrangements.

It’s not that easy to fix the meeting date with various countries being busy to get through their annual budgets.