Birds smuggled from Asia carry Avian flu

[Guest guest]

Fwd from Promed

 

Smuggled birds raise fears of avian flu spread

-------------

The small suitcase being carried through the Brussels airport by the

traveler from Thailand looked unremarkable. But when customs officials

opened it on 18 Oct 2004, they found a surprise: 2 rare small eagles,

weak

but healthy-looking, taped inside lengths of PVC pipe.

 

Their surprise turned to horror when tests on the eagles came back 4

days

later: the smuggled birds were infected with avian influenza H5N1, the

South East Asian virus that health authorities fear could blow up into a

 

pandemic and kill millions.

 

The finding launched a frantic hunt for the man who carried the eagles,

the

officials who inspected them, and the 135 passengers who shared the

man's 2

flights. 23 people were tested; 652 birds that had been in the airport,

including the eagles, were destroyed. The episode did not spark an

outbreak, but it shook international health authorities. It demonstrated

 

that trade in smuggled wildlife could become an inadvertent and

efficient

ally in moving a lethal disease around the world.

 

Underscoring that fear, 3 weeks later, customs officials in Taipei found

28

parrots packed into PVC pipe in a piece of hand luggage that had been

carried from Indonesia, another country grappling with H5N1 flu. [Have

these birds been tested for H5N1 in Taipei? - Mod. AS] " Those are the

ones

that were caught. There are almost certainly others that have not been

caught, " said Dr Peter Daszak, executive director of the Consortium for

Conservation Medicine in New York.

 

So far this year [2004], avian influenza H5N1 has caused illness in 44

humans in Thailand and Viet Nam, killing 32 of them, as well as causing

the

slaughter, or death from illness, of more than 100 million birds, but it

 

has not moved beyond 8 countries in South East Asia.

 

Last Monday [29 Nov 2004] a World Health Organization official warned

that,

if avian flu gains the genetic ability to move easily from person to

person, it could cause up to 100 million deaths around the world. Last

month WHO summoned vaccine manufacturers to its Geneva headquarters for

an

emergency summit, warning that the world's capacity for making pandemic

flu

vaccine stands at only 330 million doses and that vaccine production

will

take at least 6 months.

 

The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the primary federal entity charged

with

intercepting smuggled wildlife, has only 100 inspectors spread among US

ports, airports, and border crossings. " The resources that are put into

trying to police the illegal trade are minuscule, " said Peter Knights of

 

the anti-smuggling organization WildAid. " We seem to be extremely

worried

about anthrax and bioterrorism, but there is a risk here that we are not

 

taking seriously enough. "

 

[byline: MAJ McKenna]

 

--

ProMED-mail

<promed

 

[The spread of the H5N1 avian influenza from south east Asia to other

parts

of the world may take place mainly by infected birds. These might be

either

domestic (transported legally, or rather, illegally), or wild, migrating

 

birds. Theoretically, infected humans could also be vectors of H5N1, but

 

this scenario seems to be rather remote, as long as human to human

infection remains rare. - Mod.AS]