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Call to Vaccinate a Million UK Children Against Bird Flu

Posted on: Friday, 14 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By Ian Swanson

HEALTH chiefs say more than a million children in Britain must be vaccinated against flu as fears grow that a deadly avian form of the disease will arrive here within weeks.

Cases of avian flu, which have devastated bird flocks in south- east Asia, have now been confirmed in Turkey and Romania.

A vaccine against avian flu is still about 12 months away, according to experts.

But the Department of Health said it was essential normal winter flu jabs were given to children with asthma or diabetes and to other high-risk groups including the over-65s and people with chronic illnesses. Around 1.1 million children in Britain suffer from asthma and about 20,000 from diabetes.

Although the only human deaths from bird flu so far have been among people who had direct contact with infected birds, scientists fear the virus will mutate and could then spread from humans to humans.

There have been 117 confirmed cases of bird flu among humans in South East Asia, leading to 60 deaths.

The "nightmare scenario" is that someone already suffering from ordinary flu could also to become infected with bird flu and act as a "mixing vessel" in which the virus could adapt and spread more quickly.

There has been speculation such a development could lead to a pandemic and up to 50 million people worldwide could die.

Last month the Chief Medical Officer for England, Liam Donaldson, said it was a "biological inevitability" that an expected flu pandemic would seriously affect the health of people in this country.

He said contingency plans were looking at 50,000 deaths in the UK from the pandemic.

Around 14 million doses of flu vaccine are available on the NHS for older people and those with chronic conditions, but officials are anxious to improve on last year's 71 per cent uptake among vulnerable groups.

David Harper, chief scientist at the Department of Health, said if avian flu did arrive in Britain officials would consider vaccinating poultry and farm workers against flu.

Dr Debby Reynolds, the UK's chief veterinary officer,

sought to calm fears by insisting there had been no reports of a human influenza outbreak in Turkey.

But she said: "It shows there is a risk to the UK and this is a developing situation, which we are monitoring closely."

Samples of the infected birds from the Asian part of Turkey were taken to the Veterinary Laboratory Agency (VLA) in Weybridge on Wednesday morning and tested positive for the H5N1 virus yesterday. They came from a turkey farm in Balikesir, in north west Anatolia, where 1700 birds died as a result of the virus when it was first detected earlier this month.

A further 7600 domestic birds were destroyed and five hectares of land nearby were disinfected.

Tests on diseased birds in Romania tested positive.

Philip Todd, the European Commission's health spokesman, urged people not to be "overly concerned" and said the authorities in Turkey and Romania were working hard to stop the disease spreading. He said:

"So long as we can stamp out the disease rapidly we hope we can get on top of this situation quite quickly."

But he said precautions were necessary. "We need to ensure we have good surveillance. We also need to reinforce our border controls against any possible illegal imports of live birds and report to the authorities if we find any abnormal bird deaths in the countryside."

Source: Evening News; Edinburgh (UK)

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