February 28, 2006

EU well prepared to combat bird flu

The European Union is well prepared to combat bird flu, as evidenced by the fact that it has been able to detect H5N1 in wild birds found dead, enabling officials to take early measures to prevent a wide spread of the virus to commercial poultry, a senior European health official said Monday.

"I don't think there will be human cases in the (EU) community because we are well prepared," Bernard Van Goethem, the European Commission's director for animal health said.

However, veterinary experts meeting in Paris Monday warned of huge gaps in their knowledge of bird flu, particularly how wild birds might spread the disease.

France Saturday reported the EU's first case of H5N1 on a commercial poultry farm --in a zone in the southeast of the country that was already under heightened surveillance because H5N1 had previously been found there in dead wild ducks.

"There's this big enormous black hole about wild birds that we know absolutely nothing about," said Ilaria Capua, chief of a laboratory in Padua, Italy, which Monday identified Niger as the second sub-Saharan African country to have cases of the H5N1 bird flu.

Capua noted that all bird cases of H5N1 have been detected in birds that were either dead or sick. One concern is that there may be other types of wild bird that can carry H5N1 without being sickened, and that they could spread the virus undetected, becoming "a never-ending source" of potential infection, she said.

She said Europe could find itself "under a double machine gun" of potential infection spread by wild birds migrating southward in winter and northward in spring.

Meanwhile, the Eu executive office announced Monday Feb 27 that health commissioner Markos Kyprianou will visit Nigeria later this week to discuss recent outbreaks of bird flu in the African country. He will meet with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and senior health and agriculture officials to offer the EU's help in tackling the spread of the lethal H5N1 strain.