grim news....seems inevitable....

H5N1 threat grows with two dead

From: Reuters From correspondents in Baku
February 11, 2006
AVIAN flu spread to a new country with Azerbaijan saying on Friday the lethal H5N1 strain had been found in wild birds floating dead on the Caspian Sea.

China and Indonesia reported two more human deaths from the virus, discovered earlier this week in Nigeria after what a senior United Nations official called a devastating spread from southern Asia over the past seven months.

Health experts are trying to warn people of the danger of a virus that is contracted through direct contact with infected birds. But episodes in countries as far apart as Nigeria in West Africa and Iraq showed the struggle they face.

Nigerian poultry farm workers used their bare hands to throw dead chickens onto fires as village children stood by to watch in an area where H5N1 flu virus was found earlier this week.

In the southern Iraqi city of Amara, which is investigating a human death that may have been caused by bird flu, children played among the dead fowl.

Muhaned Radhi's uncle said his nephew, a pigeon-seller, had been suffering from flu. "In hospital he turned worse and began bleeding from his mouth and nose, and then he died."


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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has already confirmed 88 human deaths since the virus re-emerged in late 2003 and the figure is steadily climbing.
Indonesia said a woman being treated for bird flu at a specialist Jakarta hospital had died and another patient was in critical condition.

The virus has also killed a 20-year-old woman farmer in the central Chinese province of Hunan, the Ministry of Health said.

There are fears the virus could mutate to a form where it can spread from human to human, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.

David Nabarro, who heads the U.N. drive to contain the virus, said there was no evidence it had mutated to that point, but added: "It's not far away".

A senior scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO) offered a glimmer of hope, saying a limited number of migratory birds appear to be spreading a single sub-strain of the H5N1 virus.

In theory, this could lower opportunities for the H5N1 to mutate into an easily transmissible form, according to Michael Perdue, an epidemiologist in WHO's global influenza programme.

"It could reduce the mutation level... You are less likely to have widespread mutation than if you had 20 strains hop-scotching across Asia."

Genetic sequencing of the virus found in chickens in northern Nigeria, completed late on Friday, showed it also closely matched that in poultry outbreaks in Turkey and China.

Azerbaijan, a state that lies on a crossroads between Asia and Europe, reported its first outbreak of H5N1 on Friday. Azerbaijan said the virus had been found in wild birds floating dead off its coast.

The birds were found in the Caspian Sea near the Absheron peninsula, which includes the capital Baku, and off the southern Massaly region, near the border with Iran, Emin Shakhbazov, deputy head of the country's veterinary service, told reporters.

Four children died in neighbouring Turkey last month from an outbreak of the virus.

Villagers in Nigeria said their domestic poultry were dying too, reinforcing suspicions that bird flu may be present not only in large commercial farms but also in people's backyards in Africa's most populous country.

"We are working on this farm without taking care of our health, but what else can we do? We are calling on the government to come and help us," said Alhaj Danliti, the manager of the farm, which is a stone's throw away from the village.

He said the farm had lost 10,000 chickens, almost all its stock, and he did not know why they had died. Several collapsed and died with a yellow liquid leaking from their beaks.

Nigeria was urged to step up measures to control bird flu, clamp down on poultry trade and use culling, vaccination and movement controls where outbreaks occur.

"Control measures need to be intensified," the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.