Bird flu a worry in Pakistan, Africa and Indonesia

Dec 19 2007

A medical team has been sent to Pakistan by the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the latest bird flu outbreak there.

The WHO team is checking whether there has been human-to-human transmission of the bird flu virus in the country's north-west region.

The medics will apparently travel to the North-West Frontier Province to join other WHO officials from Manshera and Abbotabad, where the country's first-ever human cases of the H5N1 avian influenza virus have occurred.

Health officials believe at least two people have died and a total of eight have been infected, including a number of blood relatives in an area around the city of Peshawar.

The outbreak prompted Pakistan's Ministry of Health to request the WHO investigate a possible human-to-human transmission, which although extremely rare, has occurred among family members in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The outbreak in humans followed a series of culling operations in the area as a result of an outbreak in local poultry.

Samples tested locally by health officials were positive and are now undergoing further analysis at a WHO laboratory.

The WHO is also helping Pakistani health officials to carry out epidemiological investigations and current surveillance, prevention and control measures are also being re-assessed.

Since last year Pakistan has been hit by multiple outbreaks of bird flu in its domestic poultry population and this year there have also been outbreaks in wild birds.

World health experts are also concerned about another two suspected bird flu outbreaks, in the West African state of Benin.

Outbreaks in Africa are always a worry because the continent's widespread poverty, lack of proper veterinary and medical facilities and huge informal farming sector could allow outbreaks to go unnoticed for longer, increasing the risk of the virus mutating.

Laboratory tests have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly virus on two poultry farms, one north of the capital Porto Novo and another on a farm in the commercial capital Cotonou.

Benin's close neighbors, Nigeria, is one of the regions worst affected by bird flu, and Togo, Niger and Burkina Faso, have all also reported H5N1 cases; Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Cameroon have also been affected.

Another worry is that the practice of ritual Voodoo sacrifice is common in Benin and experts say Voodoo priests could be particularly at risk because of their practice of tearing out the throats of live chickens during the sacrifices.

Health Ministry officials say several hundred birds were slaughtered and all farms in a 15-km (3-mile) radius were disinfected and restrictions placed on imported poultry.

The WHO is also assisting local health authorities in Myanmar and Indonesia deal with outbreaks.

A seven-year-old girl from Shan State in East Myanmar has apparently recovered from the H5N1 virus while 47-year-old Indonesian man from Banten Province has also tested positive for bird flu and has been hospitalized since 9 December.

To date of 115 confirmed human cases in Indonesia, 92 have been fatal.

Worldwide bird flu has killed at least 210 people since it re-emerged in Hong Kong in 2003; millions of birds and poultry have been culled to halt the spread of the deadly virus.

Almost every human cases of H5N1 avian flu has been the result of close contact with infected birds and experts fear the virus will ultimately mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, triggering a pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people.