• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

India bird flu tests clear 11 as EU fears grow

Posted on: Thursday, 23 February 2006, 09:09 CST

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian authorities on Thursday cleared 11 out of 12 people quarantined following an H5N1 outbreak in chickens, while the virus appeared to have infected a farm bird in the European Union for the first time.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can kill humans, took a hold on new countries, with Slovakia saying initial tests had showed it in a wild falcon and a grebe. Scientists in Australia said it would not be surprising if it had arrived on its shores.

The rapid spread of the virus from Asia into the Middle East, Africa and Europe has heightened fears of a human pandemic and triggered sharp falls in poultry sales.

In India, where hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas side-by-side with livestock and domestic fowl, the risk of human infection -- which comes from direct contact with an infected bird -- is deemed higher than in other countries.

So far there have been no human cases in India, but authorities were carrying out tests on a dozen people quarantined with suspected bird flu in Navapur, a remote town in India's western Maharashtra state.

Eleven of the 12 had tested negative but the last sample was undergoing further tests.

Authorities had virtually sealed off Navapur, placing restrictions on trains and road traffic passing through.

"We want to minimize contact between the local people and outsiders. We are telling road travelers to use masks and get on with their journeys without stopping," Maharashtra's health director, T.P. Doke, told Reuters from Navapur.

"Trains are not stopping here ... It's a kind of sealing."

There have been no cases of human-to-human transmissions of the virus, but experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form where this is possible, causing a pandemic that could kill millions.

It has killed more than 90 people in seven countries since 2003.

FARM BIRD INFECTED?

In Europe, the most immediate concerns are of the virus hitting domestic poultry. Mass culling would devastate the EU's 20 billion euro ($23.8 billion) poultry and egg industry.

Poultry producers in France have estimated a 30 percent fall in sales due to bird flu has cost them 130 million euros ($154.7 million) since November, farm minister Dominique Bussereau said.

The possible appearance of H5N1 in a farm bird in Germany, indicated by initial tests, marks a new threat. Other EU cases have been in wild birds only, mostly migratory swans.

Final test results from the duck on a farm on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen -- where Germany's first H5N1 cases were detected last week -- were expected later in the day.

Other animals on the farm were now being slaughtered as a preventive measure.

Neighboring France confirmed late on Wednesday a second wild duck on its territory had H5N1.

Countries have implemented measures such as protection and surveillance zones to try and halt the spread of the virus.

But it is difficult to stop birds from migrating and Australian scientists said they feared birds from nearby Indonesia are most likely to have brought the virus to the north of the country, although it is yet to be detected.

"There is no magic curtain between Indonesia and Australia, and given the expanse of our land it would not be surprising if it was here," said Professor Mark von Itzstein from Griffith University in the state of Queensland.

Despite its spread around the world, researchers were taking some heart from the fact that H5N1 has remained relatively dormant in Thailand and Vietnam, a region many thought would be the epicenter of a possible human pandemic.

Officials said vaccination and well-organized grass-roots monitoring networks were the reason for bird flu's unexpected failure to spread during the countries' recent "cold season," which in previous years is when it seemed to thrive.

(Reporting by Kamil Zaheer in New Delhi, Michael Perry in Sydney, Michael Hogan in Hamburg, Paule Bonjean in Paris)

Source: REUTERS

More News in this Category