The most dangerous form of bird flu was confirmed on Friday in Egypt, the second African country hit after Nigeria, while France, Europe’s largest poultry producer, said the rapidly spreading H5N1 virus has probably also penetrated its borders.
Six cases, all involving poultry raised in private homes, have been detected in the greater Cairo area and one in the Minya region, 250km south of the capital, said a government spokesperson.
Tests are also being carried out on chickens in the southern governate of Qena, where the popular tourist areas of Luxor and Thebes are located, after the mysterious deaths of about 130 birds of in a village there.
In Europe, French Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau said late on Friday there is a ”90%” chance that a dead wild duck found in the central-eastern Ain department was infected with the lethal strain of the virus. He added that the definite test result would be known by late Saturday or early Sunday.
Meanwhile, a new case of H5N1 was confirmed on Friday in Austria, Slovenia and Italy, while Germany admitted its 10 cases confirmed on Thursday would most likely be followed by more.
H5N1 kills about half the humans it infects. Since 2003, just more than 90 people, all of whom had come into direct contact with the carcasses of infected fowl, have died, most of them in China and South-East Asia, but also in Iraq and eastern Turkey.
If the virus mutates into a form that can pass between humans, a global pandemic could ensue that experts have estimated could claim 142-million lives.
Even without a mutation, there remains a significant risk for people. The World Health Organisation said on Friday that Romania, with 31 affected villages where the bird-flu virus is sweeping through poultry flocks in undeveloped rural areas with poor infrastructure, ”runs the risk of human contamination at any moment”.
Other European countries with confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 are Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Ukraine and Russia.
Aside from protecting people, a major priority in Europe is to stop avian influenza spreading from wild birds and devastating the continent’s poultry industry.
Sales of chicken have already dropped across Europe.
Germany, The Netherlands, Norway and Slovenia joined other European nations on Friday by ordering all poultry kept indoors to ensure that domestic hens, ducks and geese do not come into contact with infected wild birds.
The other countries are Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg and Sweden.
The Netherlands went a step further and said it would seek authorisation from the European Commission to vaccinate free-range poultry against avian flu, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.
In Brussels, the European Commission warned that poorly controlled vaccinations could allow some birds to become infected and pass on the virus.
The commission has also decided that if H5N1 should be transmitted from a wild bird to a domestic fowl, there would be a mandatory slaughter and the poultry eggs destroyed on the infected farm.
Also on Friday, the United Nations’ top animal-health official warned that Africa needed masive intervention to tackle bird flu.
Bernard Vallat, who heads the World Organisation for Animal Health, said efforts to prevent the virus from spreading in Africa would ”have to be much superior to that in south-east Asia, almost colossal”.
”If several regions are affected, as it seems the case with Nigeria, we must vaccinate all the chickens,” he told the French newspaper Le Figaro. He added that this would be a ”very costly procedure which cannot be conducted unless there is urgent international aid”.
Nigeria’s Information Minister, Frank Nweke, told reporters in Abuja a that new outbreak of suspected bird flu has been detected in the northern state of Bauchi.
”Following reports of high mortality of birds in a poultry farm in Toro in Bauchi state, the federal government ordered the immediate stamping out of the entire bird population in that farm,” he said.
H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed in three northern Nigerian states and was suspected to be present in several others. It was first confirmed in the country on February 8.
The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States said it is drawing up strategies to combat bird flu in the region, while trying to involve global bodies such as the UN.
Senegal, which is home to several sites where migratory birds flock, on Friday said it was stepping up surveillance.
Since the outbreak was first detected in Nigeria, tens of thousands of poultry, ducks and ostriches have been culled, burned and buried. — AFP
