Bird flu. Sinister droppings

Date: 18/02/06

As Europe frets over flu, other places should be worrying more

FIRST, Italy. Then Greece, Austria and Germany. One by one, several European countries confirmed this week they had detected the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which can be lethal to humans. It was also suspected in Slovenia. As the virus spread, so did the panic. Helplines in Italy got calls from pet owners asking if they should kill their canaries. Despite official assurances that it was safe to eat chicken, poultry sales plunged 70%. Fortunately, the virus must still make several leaps in Europe before it presents a serious risk to humans--and, even then, it will not be dangerous to eat properly cooked poultry unless the disease changes radically.

So far, the virus has been found only in wild birds. Nothing suggests it has passed to domestic poultry. To catch the disease from a chicken or duck, moreover, a human being must come into contact with the excretions or secretions of an infected bird. In Europe fewer people live with poultry than in Asia, where H5N1 has claimed at least 91 lives.

The bird flu that reached western Europe this week seems to have been carried by swans fleeing a Balkan cold snap. But the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome spoke this week of a new peril: migrating birds could bring the disease back after wintering in Nigeria, where an outbreak was confirmed last week at a farm near Kaduna. One official saw a "real risk" looming in spring.

Again so far, nothing suggests that humans have been infected in Africa. But Nigeria is one of three new "hot spots" that worry the FAO's experts far more than anywhere in Europe. Like other countries in Africa, it has only rudimentary veterinary and medical facilities. However, Africa does not have the same density of either humans or poultry that is found in Asia, and Nigeria--uniquely in Africa--has a developed poultry-rearing industry with big farms on which it is much easier to detect and control outbreaks of avian flu.

Another area of concern is Azerbaijan, where the authorities are said to have been slow to take precautionary measures. Yet another is Iraq, where five northern districts have been infected--and where a major outbreak would be extremely difficult to control. The big risk everywhere is that a strain of the virus will transmute into a version that can be passed from person to person. That has not happened so far and, with luck, may never.

As Europe frets over flu, other places such as Azerbaijan, Nigeria and Iraq should be worrying more.