July 8, 2004

OIE Says Bird Flu Cases Likely Part Of Old Outbreak

The world animal health body OIE said on Wednesday new bird flu cases found in China and Thailand were likely to be part of the same outbreak of the disease that killed 24 people earlier this year.

"The virus can still be in circulation and I think it is," Karim Ben Jebara, head of the Paris-based OIE's animal health information unit, told Reuters, adding it was likely that the disease was transmitted by migratory birds.

"You cannot do anything to fight the virus in wild birds. So the most important thing is to keep the wild birds far from the domestic ones," he said.

Thailand has confirmed outbreaks of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997, at two farms near towns north of Bangkok. China said the virus had struck a farm in central Anhui province, 300 km (180 miles) west of Shanghai.

"Now they have to compare the strain found recently and the one isolated before. If it is the old one coming back, that means the countries which thought they had eradicated the disease were wrong," Ben Jebara said.

He stressed that both countries had regularly reported new bird flu cases over the last months, although there had been more in Thailand. Thus it was very likely that the strains would prove to be the same.

The outbreak earlier this year killed 16 people in Vietnam and eight in Thailand. About 100 million fowl died or were culled, more than 40 million of them in Thailand, which had been the world's fourth-largest chicken exporter.

"Countries have to increase their surveillance. We have to make sure we don't start an outbreak like the first one."

Both Thailand and China have said that the new outbreaks were being dealt with decisively and a repeat of the epidemic that swept across much of Asia earlier this year was unlikely.