 |
||
|
INTERVIEW -
Western Europe bird flu threat seen rising next spring |
||
|
PARIS (Reuters) - Deadly avian flu may reach western Europe next spring if birds in Africa become infected with the virus in the meantime, a top veterinary official said on Monday. The H5N1 bird flu strain, which has killed 70 people and caused the destruction of tens of millions of birds in Asia, has spread to flocks in Russia and eastern Europe. Veterinary experts believe migrating wildfowl have been largely to blame. Millions of birds fly south from Russia every autumn, crossing the Middle East, eastern Europe and heading into east and central Africa in their search for warmer climates. "The wildfowl have now passed (into Africa) and therefore so has the threat to western Europe. But this does not diminish the importance of surveillance and monitoring," Alex Thiermann, President of the International Animal Health Code at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) told Reuters. It is in areas like Kenya's Rift Valley that birds are likely to come into contact with others that have migrated along different routes from western Europe. Should infection spread in these wintering grounds, wildfowl could carry H5N1 to western Europe when they return in a few months. |
"The problem is when these birds come back up in the spring. The question of species mixing in Africa must be examined as birds share common wintering grounds there," Thiermann said. EU veterinary experts have relaxed their advice for poultry breeders in Europe on keeping birds inside and some member states have already started to adapt their rules accordingly. "There is clearly an appetite from some member states to scale down the measures," a European Commission official said. "But in the spring, there will be a new migratory influx and we need to be prepared...and more vigilant again," he added. SOME SPECIES ARE BETTER CARRIERS But more research needed to be done into which species of wildfowl were more effective carriers of H5N1 and what happened to the virus in these wild birds over time, Thiermann said. "Not all species are successful carriers," he said. He said there were questions over how long the disease could remain in wildfowl and how active it remained.
|
He said the OIE would organise a special session of its advisory body on wildlife diseases to look at avian influenza and evaluate these risks in February. The absence of any detected cases of H5N1 in Africa has led some conservation groups to say the risk from migratory birds has been overplayed and they have called for more emphasis to be placed on monitoring the international trade in poultry. "As the year draws to a close, millions of wild birds have flown to their wintering sites across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas without the widely predicted outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu associated with their migration routes," BirdLife International said last week. "The most obvious explanation is that migrating wild birds are not spreading the disease," said Dr Michael Rands, Director and Chief Executive of BirdLife. But Thiermann said that although more work needed to be done on the threat from migratory birds, the absence of cases in Africa did not mean the risk to the continent had disappeared. "Is the surveillance system sensitive enough in Africa to give us an early indication of the virus?" he said. |
|
|
||
