Two more Indonesians contract bird flu
Source: Reuters
(Adds comments from European Union, WHO) By Achmad Sukarsono JAKARTA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Two more Indonesians were confirmed as suffering from bird flu on Tuesday and Pakistan reported its first case in a year after finding the deadly virus in a small flock of chickens near the capital Islamabad. Concern has grown since the H5N1 virus flared again in Asia in recent months, spreading through poultry flocks in South Korea, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The H5N1 virus has spread into the Middle East, Africa and Europe since it reemerged in Asia in 2003 and outbreaks have now been detected in birds in around 50 countries. On Monday, Britain completed the cull of 160,000 turkeys following the discovery of bird flu on a turkey farm in eastern England. South Korea and Hong Kong on Tuesday joined Japan and Russia in banning British poultry. The European Commission criticised the bans. "Any global ban on the UK is totally disproportionate," a spokesman for the EU executive told a regular briefing, adding it was satisfied with British measures to contain the outbreak. EU veterinary experts advised national authorities to keep poultry indoors in high-risk bird flu areas to reduce their exposure to infected birds, but decided against widespread vaccination of flocks for now. In Indonesia, which has the highest human bird flu death toll, the latest human case was a girl from an upscale Jakarta area who had caught a wild bird which died two days later, Joko Suyono of the health ministry's bird flu centre said. The other was a West Java man who lived in an area where many poultry had died. Indonesia, where many people keep chickens in their backyards, has had 63 human deaths from the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus. The government has stepped up efforts to stamp out the virus which is endemic in poultry in most of the provinces in the country of 17,000 islands where most bird flu victims have caught the disease from contact with infected fowl. Avian flu is essentially an animal disease, but can infect people who come into close contact with infected birds. Experts fear it could spark a pandemic in which millions die if it mutates into a form passing easily from person to person. Egypt on Monday reported a 17-year-old girl had died from the virus which is known to have claimed at least 165 lives since 2003. "CONTAINED" In Pakistan, Mohammad Afzal, Livestock Commissioner at the Ministry of Agriculture, said all the chickens in the flock of about 40 birds at a house in Rawalpindi, a city adjoining Islamabad, had died or been culled as a result of H5N1. "It has been contained and there is no danger of the spread of this virus because there are no poultry farms near this house," he told Reuters. Pakistan's first reported cases of H5N1 bird flu were found in chickens in February last year in North West Frontier Province. In all, about 40,000 chickens were culled. There have been no human cases in Pakistan. The two new Indonesian cases came as Jakarta said Indonesia would not be sharing its H5N1 bird flu virus samples with foreign laboratories, but would make its genetic data available for other experts. Sharing of H5N1 samples is crucial as it allows experts to study the makeup of the virus, trace its evolution and the geographical spread of any particular strain. They are also used to prepare vaccines. "We cannot share (virus) samples for free. There should be rules of the game for it," Lily Sulistyowati told Reuters. "Just imagine, they could research, use and patent the Indonesia strain. We cannot give the (virus) specimen, but we can share data in the gene bank," she added. Sulistyowati confirmed Indonesia would sign a Memorandum of Understanding with U.S. company Baxter International Inc on Wednesday to develop a human bird flu vaccine. (Additional reporting by Mita Valina Liem in JAKARTA, Kang Shinye in Seoul and Nao Nakanishi in HONG KONG)
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