February 17, 2004

 

 

Asia Warned To Stay On Alert Over Bird Flu

 

One month after bird flu began its devastating sweep across Asia, health officials in some affected countries believe they are getting their outbreaks under control. But international public-health and food-safety experts warn that complacency in dealing with the lethal disease could unleash a second wave of the epidemic, raising the risk of more human infections.

 

More than 80 million chickens and ducks have been destroyed in 10 Asian countries in a bid to contain avian influenza, which has killed 20 people in Thailand and Vietnam and has been detected in a milder form among poultry in the U.S.

 

Efforts to control the disease have produced mixed results. New infections in poultry populations appear to have been halted in Japan and South Korea. But on Monday, Thailand said bird flu had appeared in a previously unaffected province and had resurfaced in eight others, while Vietnam disclosed one new human and fresh poultry infections. China, Indonesia, Cambodia and Laos continue to report more outbreaks among poultry flocks, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Meanwhile, China confirmed bird flu in fowl in Tibet.

 

Public-health experts worry that the longer the H5N1 strain of the flu virus, which can pass from birds to humans, is in circulation among poultry, the greater the danger it could mutate into a form that could pass from human to human, possibly setting a global pandemic in motion. "The more birds we have that are infected, the more risk we have for people," says Georg Petersen , the World Health Organization's representative in Jakarta.

 

The fact that bird flu in China hasn't been contained is of particular concern. Chinese authorities have reported 38 separate outbreaks scattered around the vast country, and H5N1 has been confirmed in more than half the infected areas so far, with tests pending in other cases. That the virus could strike so quickly and in widely spaced locations is prompting fear that the disease might become endemic in China, with outbreaks persisting for months or even years.

 

"It's certainly not fading away," says Roy Wadia, a Beijing-based WHO spokesman. "As to whether it's spreading at this moment in China, I can't really say, but we think it will be a while before the situation really turns around -- not just for China, but for all the countries with outbreaks."

 

About 122,000 fowl in 14 Chinese provinces have died of bird flu, and authorities have culled 2.3 million birds to try to contain its spread, according to China's Ministry of Agriculture. The ministry said all poultry have been slaughtered within a three-kilometer radius of each outbreak, and that for an additional two kilometers beyond that perimeter, antiflu vaccinations for birds have been made compulsory.

 

Meanwhile, bird flu is spreading rapidly in Indonesia. Subhash Morzaria, an expert on viral diseases at the FAO in Bangkok, says the disease is now "more widespread" in Indonesia than in any other Asian country, having surged through chicken populations in Java, as well in parts of Bali, Sumatra and Kalimantan. "You can't say it has been controlled at all. It has really spread quite a lot, especially in Java," says Mr. Morzaria, who completed a one-week visit to Indonesia on Monday.

 

There is somewhat better news from Thailand and Vietnam, where officials believe that large-scale culling has worked to slow severe bird-flu outbreaks. In Thailand, where authorities have slaughtered more than 30 million birds in recent weeks, agriculture officials said the "first wave" of the epidemic, which at its height affected 40 of the country's 76 provinces, had been contained. But late Monday, the Associated Press quoted Thai officials as saying a fighting cock was the likely reason for the flu's emergence in ducks in northeastern Roi Et province.

 

Last week, Thai authorities declared all 40 provinces disease-free, and agriculture officials are checking farms within a three-kilometer radius of previously infected areas for traces of the disease.

 

In Vietnam, where authorities have killed more than 37 million birds, Bui Quang Anh, director of Vietnam's department of animal health, told reporters last week that the epidemic has "begun to stop," citing the fact that fewer localities were reporting fresh outbreaks.

 

But public health and food safety experts continue to caution that the risk of fresh infections remains high for both countries, and that officials need to be vigilant. "It's still too early to say whether or not this is slowing down," says Maria Cheng, a WHO spokeswoman in Hanoi. "We don't think that the threat will subside for the next month at least."

 

Indeed, on Monday, Vietnam reported that flu has spread to poultry in eight previously uninfected villages in eight provinces earlier affected by the disease. The villages are located in northern, southern and central parts of the country, according to officials at Vietnam's ministry of agriculture and rural development. Officials also reported at least one new human infection in Vietnam, raising total confirmed cases among humans to 20, including 14 people who have died of the H5N1 virus.

 

Even in countries where the disease appears to be on the wane, risks remain, say food-safety experts. "It's possible the disease can re-emerge in areas where authorities think it has been controlled," says Diderik de Vleeschauwer, an information officer at the FAO's Bangkok office.

 

FAO officials say the H5N1 strain can survive for days or weeks in cadavers or in damp soil, and that it could be carried to uninfected farms or poultry markets on people's shoes or the wheels of their cars. That opens the possibility for future outbreaks.

 

There also are growing concerns that some Asian governments, eager to defray the economic and social costs of their bird flu outbreaks, may be shifting their focus toward rehabilitating their poultry industries too quickly.

 

"We think that a number of countries in the region are focusing more on the economic and agriculture aspects and that the human aspects are being underprioritized," says Bjorn Melgaard, the WHO's country representative in Thailand.

 

Import bans on poultry products from infected countries are taking a steep economic toll on Asian poultry industries. That is particularly the case for export-geared countries such as Thailand, which exported more than $1.2 billion in poultry products last year. "Total bans [on poultry products] were too extreme of a reaction," contends Sarasin Viraphol, executive vice president of Thailand-based Charoen Pokphand Group, Asia's largest chicken exporter. "There still haven't been any known cases of illness from eating cooked chicken."

 

There could be some relaxing of trading bans around the corner. In Japan, authorities say they are considering easing import bans on chicken-related imports from several countries hit by the flu outbreak, including Thailand, China and the U.S. In talks last week with Thai and Chinese trade officials, Japan said it is willing to resume imports of heat-treated chicken products from those two countries if certain conditions are met.

 

Hirofumi Kugita, an official at the agriculture ministry, says Japan will shortly draw up new standards required for imports, such as heating all poultry at 70 degrees Celsius for one minute. He says he didn't know when imports would resume, but added it would be "a matter of weeks."