February 27, 2006

The American continent could be hit by bird flu

The Americas are directly exposed to the threat of bird flu, a top international animal health expert said in an interview published Friday Feb 24.

"Different leads allow us to fear the contamination of birds of the American continent," Bernard Vallat, director of the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, said in an interview in Le Monde.

"Except for Australia and New Zealand...the rest of the world is directly exposed," he said.

"This hypothesis should imperatively be taken into account by all the national and international organizations overseeing this health question," Vallat was quoted as saying.

Vallat said the spread of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has spread from Asia to Europe and Africa, is quickly transforming from an epidemic to a pandemic.

He said only water fowl could carry the virus so far, but that it could mutate to affect land birds; a major concern to poultry farmers.

"We would then be in a context considerably more unfavourable and worrying," he said.

He also spoke out against vaccinating birds, saying that would complicate efforts to diagnose the flu and cost too much. France and the Netherlands, the European Union's largest poultry producers, were given the green light from EU veterinary experts Wednesday to go ahead with limited preventive vaccinations of birds.

No birds have been detected with the flu in the US or elsewhere in the American continent.