Re: Outbreak in poultry in Pakistan feb 2007
British Veterinarian Doesn't Have Bird Flu Virus, Tests Show
By Mark Deen and Bill Murray
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- A British veterinarian who fell ill after helping contain an outbreak of the deadly avian influenza virus at a turkey farm in eastern England has tested negative for the disease.
The unidentified man was held in quarantine in a hospital yesterday after reporting a mild respiratory illness, the U.K.'s Health Protection Agency said. The vet will be discharged later today, the Nottingham City Hospital said.
The U.K. culled 159,000 fowl at a farm in Suffolk owned by Bernard Matthews Holdings Ltd., Europe's largest producer of poultry, after the H5N1 strain of avian flu was found there. Global disease trackers are monitoring H5N1 infections in birds, which can create opportunities for the virus to mutate into a form that's more easily spread among people.
``It should be remembered that chest infections and fevers are common in Europe at this time of year, when ordinary seasonal flu circulates,'' said John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPA.
The H5N1 virus is known to have infected at least 272 people worldwide since 2003, killing 166 of them, according to a statement yesterday from the World Health Organization. The Geneva-based agency confirmed that the virus killed a 17-year-old girl in Egypt, the country's second bird flu death this year.
Recent European outbreaks in birds haven't increased the risk of a flu pandemic among people, WHO officials said yesterday. The U.K. is reviewing its stockpile of antiviral medicines including Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu, which the WHO recommends for treating H5N1 in people.
Antiviral Drugs
The U.K. man, an employee of the State Veterinary Service, underwent tests at Nottingham hospital, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.
All workers at the farm were offered antiviral drugs, Pat Troop, the HPA's chief executive officer, told the BBC on Feb. 4. She would be ``very surprised'' if the disease had spread to any of them, as ``it doesn't pass easily from bird to human,'' she said.
At least 2,500 turkeys out of 159,000 died at the Holton farm before the culling began, making the outbreak among the largest in poultry farms in Western Europe, according to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE. The government is restricting movement in 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) around the farm.
U.K. officials are looking at a possible link to an outbreak in Hungary, where Bernard Matthews has farms. The Hungarian government said the eastern European division only sells locally.
Asian Strain
Tests have identified the virus as the highly pathogenic Asian strain, similar to a virus found in Hungary in January, The U.K.'s Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement on its Web site. The Hungarian outbreaks in geese last month were the first confirmed H5N1 infections in the European Union since August.
In Pakistan, bird flu killed chickens and peacocks, the country's first outbreaks of the disease in seven months, an agriculture ministry official said.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza was found to have killed
18 of 40 chickens raised in a coop in the northern city of Rawalpindi, which joins the capital, Islamabad, said Mohammad Afzal, animal husbandry commissioner at the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock.
A separate outbreak was reported in
peacocks kept by a household in Manshera city, in the country's North West Frontier province, Afzal said over the telephone from Islamabad today. No human H5N1 cases have been reported in the South Asian nation.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Deen in London at
markdeen@bloomberg.net ; Bill Murray in London at at
wmurray1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: February 7, 2007 04:04 EST
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