‘Bird flu’ claims first EU victim

Date: 24/04/03

By Karen Carstens

Dutch and Belgian health officials held talks with the European Commission on Tuesday (22 April) after the bird-flu epidemic which has hit the two countries claimed what is believed to be its first human victim in the European Union.

The Commission's standing committee on the food chain and animal health was told that the Netherlands' authorities are investigating the 17 April death of a 57-year-old veterinarian.

Initial reports had suggested that the virus was harmless to humans.

The vet died of pneumonia in the southern Dutch town of Den Bosch two days after visiting a farm at which animals were infected with avian influenza. Health officials said he had failed to undergo vaccination or take antiviral medication recommended by the government as a preventative measure for workers coming into contact with infected animals.

A total of 82 Dutch animal health workers have been infected with the disease since late February, but all have since recovered after suffering mild eye infections.

Commission spokeswoman Beate Gminder said two further cases of avian flu were discovered in Belgium over Easter following an initial outbreak at a farm in the eastern province of Limburg on 16 April. Some 550 birds were found dead there and the Belgian authorities immediately pledged to slaughter 250,000 birds within a three-kilometre radius of the farm.

Anyone coming into direct contact with poultry is being urged to get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, some 20 million chickens and turkeys affected by the virus have been slaughtered in the Netherlands since late February, where 233 infected holdings have been confirmed and another 23 are suspected to be contaminated.

German farms are on full alert in case the virus spreads into their country.

The Commission's food chain and animal health voted this week to extend until 12 May existing measures in the Netherlands aimed at eradicating the disease. They include an export ban on live poultry, hatching eggs and unprocessed poultry manure or litter. Birds must also be culled in 'buffer zones' around the infected areas.

The committee also extended until 10 May similar measures in place for Belgium, where only one case of conjuctivitis, a mild eye infection, due to avian flu has been reported - as opposed to 82 in the Netherlands.

However, Belgium lifted its own restrictions on domestic transports of chickens and eggs outside areas affected by the outbreak on Monday (21 April).

Bird flu claimed six lives in Hong Kong in 1997, but Dutch officials warned that it was alarmist to compare it to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the pneumonia-like virus which has claimed more 200 victims worldwide in the past few months.

However, they conceded there was a small risk that bird and human flu could produce a mutation that humans might have no immunity against.

The mutation could form in pigs, so the standing committee also voted in addition to its existing safety measures that tests will be conducted on pigs kept in infected holdings.

Belgium said it may also decide to apply vaccination against avian influenza of susceptible birds in zoos.

Dutch and Belgian health officials held talks with the European Commission on 22 April 2003 after the bird-flu epidemic which has hit the two countries claimed what is believed to be its first human victim in the European Union.