February 18, 2004

Bird Flu Virus May Be Impossible To Eradicate

The bird flu crisis in Asia, which has already claimed 21 lives, may be impossible to eradicate, the United Nations food agency's director of animal health said on Tuesday.

Samuel Jutzi, director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) animal health department, said some 80 million birds had been culled or died from the disease and that experts were still not sure of the source of the epidemic.

"We still hope that the countries in the region can get on top of the disease but we are less certain as to whether the virus can be pushed back or eradicated," Jutzi said.

"It may well be that the sector has to live with this virus as it tries to live with other diseases."

Experts from FAO, the World Health Organization and world animal health body the OIE will meet on February 26 in Bangkok to formulate concrete strategies to try to control the disease that has swept through eight Asian countries.

The virus has killed at least 14 Vietnamese and six Thais but Jutzi said that was a relatively low toll considering its vast geographical spread.

"There has been a massive exposure of humans to the disease particularly those involved in the culling exercises. If the virus crossed the border to humans more easily one would have huge numbers of cases," he said.

He said it was equally encouraging that there had been no confirmed evidence of the virus in pigs, which have a similar immune system to humans and suffer from a wide variety of diseases that also affect people.

"If there was evidence of the virus in swine it would immediately come to the surface, it is encouraging that that has not happened, particularly in southeast Asia where poultry and swine live closely together."