January 10, 2006
Europe put on alert as bird flu toll keeps rising
By Sam Lister, Health Correspondent
EFFORTS to contain human cases of bird flu were stepped up across Europe last night after the World Health Organisation confirmed that 14 people in Turkey had now contracted the deadly disease.
The H5N1 strain of the virus has emerged in four separate regions of the country, raising fears that it is sweeping west towards Europe proper.
The identification of three cases near Ankara, the Turkish capital, prompted European Union officials to widen an existing ban on bird imports and review surveillance efforts.
British authorities said last night that the country was primed to move into a new phase of pandemic planning should evidence emerge that the disease had passed directly between humans. Both the WHO and the European Commission emphasised that all the victims so far appeared to have contracted the virus directly from infected birds.
Bird flu has killed 76 people since the latest outbreak of the H5N1 strain in late 2003. Human cases had been confined to East Asia until the disease was identified in Turkey last week, where three children have now died of the disease. The EU banned imports of live birds and poultry products, including feathers, from Turkey, last October. From today, imports of untreated bird feathers are also banned from countries bordering eastern Turkey — Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Syria, Iran and Iraq.
Turkish authorities said yesterday that they were investigating a further 34 human cases of suspected bird flu, as well as the 14 now confirmed by the WHO. Thirteen children were among 23 people undergoing tests in Istanbul, the gateway to Europe from Asia.
The commission insisted that EU surveillance measures, stepped up last October, were effective. In the past four months about 25,000 wild birds have been tested in the Union for avian flu and all were found negative. A commission spokesman said: “We are happy that it has not become a wider problem among the human population. We hope that it remains that way.”
A Department of Health spokesman said the Government was continuing to stockpile Tamiflu, the antiviral drug used as a first-line defence against H5N1, and should have enough to treat 25 per cent of the population by August.
Europe put on aleart as bird flu toll keeps rising
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