The virulent H5N1 bird-flu virus has hit 45 countries, killing more than 100 people and leading to the death of 200-million birds and the impoverishment of millions of small-poultry farmers — and it seems to be spreading quickly, the United Nations bird-flu chief said on Wednesday.
Dr David Nabarro said between 2003 and 2005 the virus was reported in 15 countries, but in the first four months of this year it has moved rapidly to 30 new countries, with major outbreaks in Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, India, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Burkina Faso.
”I suspect we’re going to see further spread of H5N1 into other countries,” he said. ”I don’t know where, and it may even be in countries and we don’t know it. So the spectre is one of a great increase in the global incidence of H5N1 in bird populations.”
The UN’s chief coordinator for avian influenza spoke at a breakfast meeting organised by the UN Foundation, focusing on how to best communicate to the people of the world that bird flu could be a life-and-death issue, but is hedged by uncertainty.
Nabarro said the H5N1 virus is known to have affected more than 200 people, but it probably has affected ”many, many more”.
”And this virus has led to the deaths of 200-million birds — around $20-billion worth of consequences for the countries affected — and this led to the impoverishment of millions of smallholders whose livelihoods depend on poultry,” he said.
”But it’s not just that,” he said. ”The poultry industry is in a terrible state because of drop in demand and also real problems of import and export controls.”
Even worse, Nabarro said, was that the virus has now spread to wild birds, including Muscovy ducks and certain kinds of geese that can carry it long distances without any symptoms.
These wild birds are spreading H5N1 to more countries, devastating poultry populations and getting into a few humans and causing severe illness and death, he said.
”This is very similar to the virus that caused the influenza pandemic of 1918,” Nabarro said. ”It’s not identical but it’s similar … So therefore the 1918 virus, which caused this huge pandemic associated with 40-million deaths, seems to have a successor waiting in the wings.”
”If H5N1 does undergo perhaps two, perhaps three mutations in its genetic material in a particular way, it, too, could become a virus capable of human-to-human transmission, at speed and with high consequences for human health,” he said.
”It could be the cause of the next human pandemic,” Nabarro said, ”but we don’t know whether it will, and if it does cause it we don’t know when it will come, we don’t know where it will start and we don’t know how many will be affected.”
Whether or not there is an H5N1 pandemic, ”we ought to be getting the world ready for a pandemic”, he said. — Sapa-AP