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Europe urges calm as bird flu spreads further
02-15-2006, 18h37
BRUSSELS (AFP)
European governments are taking urgent action to counter the alarming spread of bird flu, amid fears that the upcoming spring migration of birds northwards could exacerbate the problem.
Concerned officials are performing the tricky juggling act of increasing safety measures, for instance ordering poultry to be kept indoors to avoid infection, while urging consumers not to panic.
The European Union's executive arm warned Wednesday that it expects more cases of bird flu to break out as the warm spring weather brings a seasonal migration of swans and other wild birds carrying the potentially lethal disease.
Meanwhile Germany became the latest EU country to confirm the lethal H5N1 strain of the disease, which humans can catch from infected birds.
The presence of the H5N1 virus -- which in its highly pathogenic form can be fatal to humans -- has been confirmed in recent days in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Romania and the European part of Russia.
Preliminary tests have proved positive in Austria, while Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia and Ukraine are investigating suspected cases.
EU health commissioner Marko Kyprianou, attending the two days of talks with health experts from member states, underlined that there is unlikely to be an early end to the cases of bird flu.
"Given that the spring migration will begin soon we will review again the situation to see if there's need for additional methods... We shouldn't be surprised if we have more migratory wild birds with this virus," he said.
"There's no need to panic," he warned. "We have to advise the European public to stay calm... There's no reason not to consume chicken."
Many wild geese, ducks and swans are returning to Europe aftering wintering in Africa.
The next wave of migration will be by wading birds, followed in March, April and May by big flocks of songbirds such as sand martins, swallows, nightingales and swifts.
Several European governments, including France, Germany, Denmark the Netherlands and Sweden, have in recent days ordered poultry and tame birds to be kept indoors to avoid contamination.
EU health experts have also agreed to ban all imports of untreated feathers to further reduce the "high risk" of the disease spreading.
Authorities across Scandinavia also ordered poultry and tame birds to be kept indoors as of Wednesday.
Bird flu has already killed at least 90 people -- almost half those who caught it -- mostly in Southeast Asia and China where it first erupted but also in the Asian part of Turkey and northern Iraq.
So far there have been no human cases of bird flu reported in Europe or Africa, although there have been outbreaks among birds in parts of Nigeria.
In another worrying development in Greece, two elderly people who buried a dead chicken with their bare hands and are showing flu symptoms were admitted to hospital.
The avian influenza virus, first reported on Europe's southeastern flanks in early January, re-erupted with a vengeance last week, starting in Italy and Greece. But there are now almost daily reports of cases in a string of European countries.
In Germany, the authorities Wednesday set up the now-standard 10-kilometer (six-mile) surveillance zone around the site where two dead wild swans and one dead hawk were found on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea.
Hours later Hungary confirmed that it had detected bird flu in the bodies of three dead swans in the south of the country. More tests are underway to discover whether they died of the H5N1 version of the disease.
Further north, a number of dead birds, including swans, were found across Denmark on Tuesday and Wednesday.
As the EU scrambles, some underline that there is basically little it can do to prevent the disease arriving.
"We have absolutely no control over the introduction of the virus by migratory birds that are about to start returning from Africa to Siberia, Scandinavia and Greenland," said French food safety agency panelist Jean Hars. Until recently the 25-nation EU had said it is satisfied that the measures taken are sufficient.
But Brussels is closely monitoring the situation and if poultry should become infected, it may call for the culling of all birds and eggs on small holdings or farms.
In addition the European Commission has proposed speeding up the process of clamping down on new outbreaks, by making arrangements automatic rather than on a case-by-case basis.