Probes into Chiang Mai deaths ongoing

16 May 2011

Investigations into the deaths of seven people in Chiang Mai earlier in the year are ongoing with no definite conclusion in sight. In February, a Thai tour guide, New Zealander Sarah Carter, British pensioners George and Eileen Everitt and two others all died in or became ill after staying at the Downtown Inn in the central area of this northern Thai city.

The other victim was not staying at the hotel, although he ate at the hotel’s dining room, but died with similar symptoms to the others. Ms Carter’s death was originally ascribed to eating toxic seaweed, after she and her two travelling companions became ill.

Media sources in New Zealand have intimated that the Downtown Inn fatalities were the result of the hotel spraying rooms with bedbug insecticides. On the country’s 60 Minutes programme, the show’s producers alleged chlorpyrifos traces had been found in the hotel’s rooms.

Downtown Inn manager Thanthep Bunkaeo said the hotel had not used pesticides containing the chemical, while the city’s governor, Panadda Disakul, claimed there was no evidence to support a death by bedbug spray theory.

City Health Office deputy director Dr Surasing Visaruthrat said the scope of the probe into the deaths had been widened and investigators were testing for rat poisons and other pesticides as well as checking possible common environmental factors and viruses that may link the victims.

Thai authorities have enlisted the aid of experts in an attempt to get to the bottom of the problem. They have sent samples to Japan’s Osaka University and the US Disease Control Centre in Atlanta for analysis.

Tags: Chiang Mai deaths