it's in the news..
German cat gets
H5N1 bird flu, virus spreads
PARIS : Germany reported the first known case in Europe of H5N1
bird flu infecting a cat, a worrying new development as the virus
sweeps past hastily erected protective measures in large swathes of
the world.
The dead cat was found on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen, where
the highly pathogenic form of H5N1 bird flu was detected
mid-February, said Germany's national veterinary laboratory, the
Friedrich Loeffler Institute.
More tests were being carried out to find out if the cat had the
highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 which can kill humans.
"It has long been known from Asia that cats can be infected if they
eat infected birds," said the laboratory chief, Thomas
Mettenleiter.
The H5N1 strain has been detected in a leopard, tigers, civet cats
and two domestic cats in Thailand. But the World Health
Organization said in 2004 that the infection of cats was unlikely
to enhance the risks to humans.
Experts fear that H5N1, which has killed more than 90 people since
2003, may mutate into a form that can pass between humans,
launching a pandemic that could kill millions.
In the bird population, the disease was spreading further across
Europe and Africa.
France began vaccinating 700,000 domestic ducks and geese on farms
after it announced at the weekend the first outbreak of H5N1 bird
flu in a European Union poultry farm.
The commercial repercussions of the French outbreak were driven
home Tuesday as the government announced that some 30 countries
were now restricting or banning imports of poultry and poultry
products from France.
Sweden for the first time detected in ducks an unidentified strain
of bird flu, feared to be the H5N1 strain.
Initial tests at Sweden's the National Veterinary Institute "show
that we're probably talking about the same virus that has been
spreading in Russia and China," said the Swedish agriculture
board.
Elsewhere, H5N1 was detected for the first time in Bosnia, the
southern German state of Bavaria and a poultry farm in southwestern
Russia where 103,000 birds were reported to have died in a
week.
Britain said it was unlikely to escape.
"I would anticipate that avian flu will arrive at some point in the
UK," said British chief scientific advisor Professor Sir David
King, predicting that the disease would stay for at least five
years.
"We are talking about the possibility of this disease being endemic
here in the UK as it did in China. It is a long-term factor," he
told the BBC.
But world experts fretted mostly about Africa, where many countries
are ill equipped to detect or impede the spread of the
disease.
Ethiopian officials were testing some of more than 6,000 chickens
that died suddenly on a poultry farm in Endibir 175 kilometers (108
miles) southwest of Addis Ababa.
A day earlier the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE)
reported the first cases of H5N1 in Niger.
In neighbouring Nigeria -- where more than 300,000 infected fowl
have already died or been slaughtered -- H5N1 was detected in two
more states in the north.
In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the authorities said initial tests
on 400 dead chickens showed no sign of bird flu. Cases of H5N1 have
also been reported in Egypt.
Veterinarian experts from more than 50 countries gathered in Paris
said poor countries must be helped to contain the disease.
"All countries in the world need to control the virus, irrespective
of their national economies, as only one defaulting country can
seriously endanger the rest of the planet," the World Organisation
for Animal Health said at the end of a two day gathering.
Human deaths have already been recorded after the disease jumped
from bird to human in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand,
Turkey and Vietnam. Some 40 countries have now been hit by the H5N1
strain.
OIE director-general Bernard Vallat warned that bird flu was
transforming from "epidemic to pandemic".
"With the exception of Australia and New Zealand, which are not hit
by bird migrations from affected areas, the rest of the world is
directly exposed... Various clues have raised the fear it could
contaminate the American continent," he told France's Le Monde
newspaper. - AFP /dt
(source: Channel News Asia)
