India tests for H5N1 bird flu

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) – India said it was testing dozens of
people for bird flu on Sunday and France confirmed its first
avian cases of the H5N1 virus as the deadly strain spread
around the globe.

Egyptian authorities closed Cairo zoo and seven other
state-run zoos around the country for two weeks from Sunday
after cases of the H5N1 virus were detected on Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed alarm about the
rapid spread of the disease on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen
and Romania detected bird flu in poultry found dead in a
village and a summer resort near the Black Sea port of
Constanta.

Avian influenza has flared anew in recent weeks, spreading
among birds in Europe and parts of Africa, and prompting
authorities to impose bans on the poultry trade, introduce mass
culling and vaccinate poultry flocks.

The World Health Organization says the H5N1 virus has
killed 91 people worldwide since late 2003. Two hundred million
birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa
have died of the virus or been culled.

The Indian government said it had found no case of human
avian influenza after preliminary tests on a dead farmer
earlier suspected to have been the country’s first human victim
of the disease.

The world’s second-most populous country, known for its
inadequate public health infrastructure, was testing people for
avian flu after 50,000 birds died in Nandurbar district in
western Maharashtra and tests on some fowl showed H5N1 bird
flu.

“There are, however, no reports of any human cases of avian
influenza,” the ministry said in a statement.

An earlier report from a top administrator of India’s Surat
district in the western Gujarat state and the state’s health
minister had suggested the dead man had been a poultry farm
worker, but the health ministry statement did not confirm this.

The earlier report also said the man had died of “suspected
bird flu,” but the federal health ministry said no human cases
had been found.

In France, Europe’s biggest poultry producer, the farm
ministry confirmed that a duck found dead on Monday in the east
of the country had H5N1.

France’s H5N1 case was one of several wild ducks found dead
near Lyon in a region famous for the quality of its chickens.

In Cairo, zoo manager Talaat Sidraus told Reuters that
workers had begun disinfecting bird cages. Witnesses saw dead
and sick birds inside the zoo grounds but it was not
immediately clear if they had bird flu.

Elsewhere, authorities in northern Spain are testing a duck
found dead in a lake to see if it carried H5N1, while Britain
said bird flu was now more likely to reach its shores.

EUROPE ON ALERT

Germany and Austria have reported more cases of bird flu,
while authorities in Bulgaria put a man in an isolation chamber
and were testing him for H5N1 after two of his ducks died.

The disease has also spread to Egypt, which reported its
first cases of H5N1 on Friday, while in Nigeria authorities are
culling poultry and urging people not to eat sick birds after
outbreaks there.

Indonesia confirmed on Saturday that a 19th person had died
of bird flu, which has been reported in chickens and other
domesticated fowl in most provinces of the sprawling country of
220 million people.

Experts have long feared the consequences of bird flu
taking hold in Africa because of poor health and surveillance
systems.

The U.N. AIDS chief said avian flu posed a major threat to
Africa’s fight against its AIDS epidemic, challenging
overburdened health care systems and stretching economies.

Bird flu is also threatening livelihoods by slashing demand
for poultry in Europe, Nigeria and parts of India.

“I have bought 200 chickens today but I know I will not be
able to sell them,” chicken trader Mohammad Taqi said at New
Delhi’s Ghazipur poultry market, where bird droppings and
feathers litter the area and a nauseating stench fills the air.

But one customer was happy.

“I have heard about bird flu on TV but I am not bothered. I
want to enjoy the low prices,” said Nanku Ram, a laborer
holding a huge bird.

(Additional reporting by Palash Kumar and Surojit Gupta in
New Delhi, Mark Heinrich in Vienna, Tsvetelia Ilieva in Sofia,
Jonathan Wright in Cairo, Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin and Paul
Majendie in London)

(For more stories, pictures and video on bird flu see:

http://today.reuters.com/News/GlobalCoverage.aspx?type=globalNew

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