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Bird flu found in Italy, Greece, Bulgaria
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-12 08:50
Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing
Saturday they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans.
The announcement that the disease was detected in five swans in southern
Italy came a day after the opening of the Winter Games in Turin, several hundred
miles to the north. Italian officials said the virus had only affected wild
birds and posed no immediate risk to people.
The European Union said the deadly strain, which has infected at least 166
people and killed 88, most in Asia, also had been confirmed in swans in
Bulgaria.
Swans are seen at
Stavros town in northern Greece, some 480 km (298 miles) north of Athens,
February 10, 2006. Greece and Italy said on Saturday they had found swans
with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first known cases in the European Union
of wild birds with the deadly strain of the disease. Picture taken
February 10, 2006. [Reuters] |
No human infections were reported in the three countries, but the outbreak
raised concerns that the spread of the disease could increase chances for it to
mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans, who generally catch the
disease from domestic poultry.
"It's a relatively safe situation for human health; less so for animal
health," Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said.
Also Saturday, authorities in Nigeria said they were investigating whether
the deadly strain, which was discovered in the country last week, had spread to
humans after at least two children were reported ill.
The U.N.'s chief bird flu expert said the spread of bird flu, which has been
ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, increased the chance that the
virus would mutate into a form transmitted between humans and set off a
pandemic. Most human deaths from the disease so far have been linked to contact
with infected birds.
"We have got bird flu now in southeast Asia, central Asia, eastern Europe,
and west Africa," Dr. David Nabarro said, before the Greek and Italian
announcements. "Compared with eight months ago, this is a major extension of the
avian influenza epidemic."
Experts said they were reassured by the fact that the virus has been detected
in wild birds in Western Europe instead of on farms.
"The risk to humans is less if the disease is in wildlife than if it is in
poultry," said Juan Lubroth, a senior animal health officer at the Rome-based
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
The virus was found in five swans in the southern Italian regions of Puglia,
Calabria and Sicily, Storace said. The birds had arrived from the Balkans, he
said, likely pushed south by cold weather.
The European Union said Italy and Greece had agreed to create six miles of
protection and surveillance zones around each outbreak area, where birds will be
isolated to avoid infecting pet birds, tested for the virus and killed if they
are infected.
Hunting wild birds will be banned in the zones, and poultry will not be
allowed outside them, according to the Italian Health Ministry.
Greek authorities said health experts were checking poultry on farms and
homes in the region where infected swans were found outside the northern Greek
city of Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city.
The 25-nation EU said that H5N1 had been found in wild swans in the Bulgarian
wetland region of Vidin, close to the Romanian border.
"There are no reports of people infected with the bird flu virus," the
Bulgarian Health Ministry said.
In Nigeria, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said authorities were trying to
determine whether the H5N1 strain discovered on a farm in the northern state of
Kaduna on Wednesday — the first time it was found in Africa — had spread to
humans after several people were reported ill. Authorities have since reported
the same virus in two other Nigerian states.
Investigations were being conducted in the commercial capital, Lagos, and in
Kaduna. Lambo gave no details, but said he expected results to be released
Sunday.
Elsewhere, China reported its eighth human death from the H5N1 strain, and
Indonesia reported its 18th death.
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