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Bird flu not spread by wild migrants-green group
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-08 16:50
A conservation group said on Thursday that there was little evidence to back
the view that migrating wildfowl were spreading bird flu and that eastern
Europe's outbreak probably stemmed from poultry imports.
"As the year draws to a close, millions of wild birds have flown to their
wintering sites across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas without the widely
predicted outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu associated with their migration routes,"
BirdLife International said in a statement.
"The most obvious explanation is that migrating wild birds are not spreading
the disease," said Dr Michael Rands, Director and Chief Executive of BirdLife.
The bird flu virus has killed nearly 70 people in four Asian countries since
2003 leading to mass culls of birds.
Officials say the H5N1 virus could spread to new countries through migratory
birds from China, Mongolia, Vietnam and Russia -- which have reported major
outbreaks.
The avian flu has been discovered in Romania and Ukraine and bird tissue
samples were sent to Britain and elsewhere to determine whether an outbreaks
there is H5N1.
But BirdLife said no "smoking gun" had been detected among wild birds in the
region.
"The limited outbreaks in eastern Europe are on southerly migration routes
but are more likely to be caused by other vectors such as the import of poultry
or poultry products. The hypothesis that wild birds are to blame is simply far
from proven," said Rands.
"Wild birds occasionally come into contact with infected poultry and die:
they are the victims not vectors of H5N1 bird flu," he said.
BirdLife said banning the movement of poultry and related products from
infected areas and restricting the global trade in captive birds were the best
prevention methods.
"Migratory wild birds were blamed for spreading bird flu west from Asia, yet
there's been no spread back eastwards, nor to South Asia and Africa this
autumn," BirdLife said.
The H5N1 strain has not been detected in Africa yet but experts say
uncovering it in the region's rural areas will be difficult because of poor
logistics and already high mortality rates among the continent's backyard
chickens.
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