Re: Greece
Re: Greece
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&sid=aOOCwqoBsLzQ&refer=europe
Greece Suspects EU's First Case of Deadly Bird Flu (Update2)
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Greece discovered avian influenza in three swans and is testing to determine whether it's the European Union's first case of the strain of the disease that has killed birds and people across Asia.
The Greek government, having established that the virus is the H5 bird flu subtype, said it has sent samples from the three wild birds to an EU laboratory in London to check for the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain.
``The H5 strain was detected after examinations in three swan samples,'' Greek Agriculture Minister Evangelos Basiakos said today in an e-mailed statement. The swans were found in separate areas in the northern part of the country.
At least 88 people have died after contracting bird flu since the H5N1 strain was discovered in southeast Asia in 2003. The disease has since spread along migratory flight routes through China and Russia onto the European continent and yesterday was detected in Africa for the first time.
Mushrooming outbreaks in Turkey, killing four people since the beginning of the year, have illustrated the difficulties of controlling the disease once it gains a foothold. The part of Cyprus controlled by Turkey was struck last month and Iraq and most recently Nigeria have also confirmed the presence of H5N1.
Nigerian Outbreak
About 40,000 birds in Nigeria have died since the outbreak began Jan. 10, and because the disease wasn't immediately contained, the virus will probably be found in other areas of the country and other African nations, said Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health.
Results of the tests on the swans found in Greece are expected in two to eight days, Basiakos said. Greece last October reported its first suspected bird-flu case; it turned out to be a false alarm.
The EU has tried to avoid avian influenza outbreaks by banning imports of poultry from infected areas and halting trade in pet birds. Street markets selling live fowl have been shut down and surveillance of wild birds stepped up.
The World Health Organization has warned that the animal disease may mutate into a virus capable of transferring between people. The resulting pandemic could kill as many as 7.4 million people, the United Nations organization says.
National governments are building stockpiles of millions of doses of drugs thought to be effective against the disease, including antivirals such as Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu and GlaxosmithKline Plc's Relenza. GlaxoSmithKline has already sold out of this year's production of the drug, Chief Executive Officer Jean-Pierre Garnier said this week.
Communal Stockpile
EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou is studying how to amass a communal stockpile of medicines for the 25 EU nations to ensure the whole bloc is covered in the event of a flu pandemic.
Mounting public concern about the threat has hurt sales at poultry processors including France's LDC SA and Nutreco NV, which owns Spain's biggest supplier of chicken and turkey meat. Sales of poultry in Italy dropped 13 percent last year as people opted for alternatives to avoid contracting bird flu, an Italian farmers group said.
Bird flu, which occurs in mild and severe forms, was first recognized in Italy in 1878 and can be contracted from the feces or exhaled air of infected birds. H5N1 shows genetic similarities to the so-called Spanish flu that killed 40 million people in 1918, according to research published in the journals Nature and Science on Oct. 5.
Symptoms
Symptoms of avian influenza in humans have ranged from typical influenza-like symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches to eye infections, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia and other severe and life- threatening complications.
The last time a deadly bird flu virus struck the EU in February 2003, more than 25 million Dutch chickens were slaughtered and a veterinarian who contracted the illness died, according to the Lancet medical journal.
Human cases of H5N1 more than doubled last year as the bird illness spread further in Asia and to Eastern Europe. The lethal strain has also infected people in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, the worst-hit country with at least 42 fatalities from the disease.
