Bird Flu Hits Sweden; Afghans Suspect It

March 16, 2006

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Mar 15, 12:02 PM EST

AP Photo/MUSADEQ SADEQ

Sweden recorded its first case of the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain on Wednesday, saying European laboratory tests confirm two wild birds found dead in the southeast were infected with the virus. Afghan authorities, meanwhile, said preliminary test results from a U.N. lab left them "99 percent certain" that the country's first bird flu outbreak was the deadly H5N1 strain.

Danish authorities said they too had found a wild bird infected with an aggressive strain of bird flu, but it was not immediately whether it was the deadly H5N1 strain. If confirmed as H5N1, it would be the first case of the virus in Denmark.

Also Wednesday, Myanmar announced it had culled 5,000 poultry to prevent the spread of bird flu, as authorities in western India prepared to slaughter tens of thousands of chickens.

Further tests at the lab in Rome in the next 24 hours are expected to confirm the Afghan outbreak, said Mustafa Zahir, the director of the government's environment department.

"We are 99 percent certain," he told a press conference in Kabul.

Concerns over the global spread of bird flu were heightened again this week when the Azerbaijan reported three people killed by the virus, which also has killed 98 other people in Asia, the Middle East and Turkey since 2003, according to March 13 figures from the World Health Organization.

Though human infections so far generally have been traced to direct contact with sick birds and not other people, WHO is worried the virus could mutate into form that easily spreads among people. The more regions affected, the higher the chance of this, experts say.

The virus has killed or prompted the culling of more than 140 million chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and has recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

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A European Union laboratory confirmed that two wild ducks found infected with an H5 subtype of bird flu in southeastern Sweden were infected with H5N1, Sweden's National Board of Agriculture said Wednesday.

In neighboring Denmark, the Family and Consumer Affairs Ministry said a wild bird there was infected with H5. Authorities had expected bird flu to spread there after the virus was found in nearby Germany.

"Bird flu of the highly pathogenic H5 type has been found in a wild bird in Denmark," the ministry said in a statement, adding more details would be released later Wednesday.

In Southeast Asia, Myanmar said it has culled 5,000 birds in a 3-kilometer (2-mile radius) of a farm where the country's first case of H5N1 was detected last week.

It also banned the sale of chicken and eggs near the property where 112 chickens died, in the city of Mandalay, according to the Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department.

The ban was "as a precautionary measure in accordance with international practice," Than Daing, the department's deputy director general, said Wednesday.

North Korea, meanwhile, said it has ordered all poultry to be "cooped up" to prevent infection from migratory birds which could be carrying the disease.

"Bird influenza, in general, is propagated widely by wild birds," said Mun Ung Jo, vice chairman of the North's main quarantine office, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Bird flu hit North Korea last year, forcing the impoverished country to slaughter about 210,000 chickens and other poultry. Last April, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said the outbreak was successfully contained. No new cases of bird flu have since been reported.

In India's western state of Maharashtra, tests were being conducted to determine whether four infected chickens had the deadly H5N1 strain, said UChowdhary of the federal animal husbandry department.

India has reported no human infections of the virus.

A cull of about 75,000 chickens was scheduled to begin later Wednesday in six-mile radius around four Indian villages in the Jalgaon where the outbreak was discovered last month, Chowdhary said.

India last month suffered its first outbreak of H5N1 among birds, also in Maharashtra. Authorities culled more than 200,000 birds in that outbreak.

It's not clear whether the two outbreaks were related.

Separately, Sri Lankan lawmakers launched a campaign to encourage people to buy local chicken and eggs. Chicken sales in Sri Lanka have dropped by about 20 percent since neighboring India reported its first bird flu outbreak.

The World Health Organization has said there is no risk of contracting the virus from eating properly cooked chicken.

Health researchers announced Wednesday a study in Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand to reassess the dosage of antiviral drug Tamiflu given to people sickened by bird flu.

Tamiflu, also known as oseltamivir, is widely seen as one of the few medications to have any effect against the H5N1 flu virus. However, Nguyen Duc Hien, director of the National Institute for Clinical Research in Tropical Medicine in Hanoi, said there have been a handful of cases in Vietnam that have shown resistance to the drug.

The three countries involved in the study account for 80 percent of the deaths caused so far by bird flu worldwide.