viruses can mutate, page-6

deadly bird flu virus confirmed at migratory breed Thursday, July 7, 2005.


Deadly bird flu virus confirmed at migratory breeding centre
Chinese scientists have confirmed a deadly strain of avian flu virus in a major breeding centre for birds that migrate to Australia, Siberia and South-East Asia.

Research published in the Nature and Science journals today says the virus that killed about 1,500 wild birds in western China is similar to the virus that has killed humans.

Alarmingly, the Lake Qinghai reserve is nowhere near poultry, but genetic analysis suggest the virus came from southern Chinese poultry.

It is also a sub-type that has killed more than 50 people in Asia.

The deputy director of Australia's Influenza Collaboration Centre of the World Health Organisation, Alan Hampson, says the worst-case scenario is wild birds surviving and carrying the virus.

"The more widespread that virus becomes in domestic poultry, the more ongoing exposure of humans there's going to be," he said.

Chinese scientists fear that bar-headed geese flying across the Himalayas could spread the virus into the highly populated Indian subcontinent and ultimately around the globe.

Mr Hampson says the biggest concern is if infected birds live to spread the disease.

"Potentially it mans that the disease is going to be more difficult to control, particularly in Asia," he said.

"What isn't quite yet clear at the moment is whether they can actually spread the disease, whether they're still going to be, any of them, will be well enough to actually fly from the site where they've actually contracted that infection."

However, bird expert Professor Richard Kingsford says Australian migratory shore birds are smaller and might not interact with the larger birds that have become infected.

"They would probably fly similar sorts of routes - they may feed in similar sorts of places, but they're unlikely to associate together," he said.

"When you get different species they don't generally hang out together, unless there are good areas to feed, it's hard to rule out interaction, because they are what you'd call wetland birds."

Meanwhile, WHO says there needs to be a substantial boost in global spending to stop the spread of the deadly bird flu virus.

Delegates to an international bird flu conference have been told that more than $270 million needs to be spent to stop the virus from spreading to humans.

This would come on top of spending of more than $175 million required to deal with the animal health aspects of the outbreak.

If authorities fail to control the virus, WHO warns the social, economic and human loss will be much much greater than that outlay.

Experts estimate as many as 50 million people could die if human to human transmission becomes a reality.

WHO spokesman Peter Cordingley warns there is precious little the world can do if bird flu becomes a global pandemic.

"Nobody will be able to stop it," he said.

"It would travel on planes, it would be not in the paddy fields of Vietnam as it is now and other countries around here - it would be in Washington within weeks."

A meeting of potential donor countries is expected to take place by December