- (AFP) -- UN experts warned the bird flu outbreak troubling
Asia has the potential to be more deadly than SARS and that Vietnam --
the country worst hit so far -- was ill-prepared to cope.
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- The warning came as Thailand probed whether the mysterious
deaths of thousands of chicken was due to the avian flu outbreak that has
already transferred to humans, killing at least three people.
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- World Health Organisation (WHO) experts said Wednesday
that if the strain continues to mutate it has the potential to be far more
serious than Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
-
- "If the H5N1 (avian influenza) virus attaches itself
to the common human flu virus and if it is then effectively transmitted,
it has the potential to cause widespread damage," Peter Cordingley,
the WHO's Manila-based spokesman, told AFP.
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- The H5N1 virus killed six of 18 people who fell sick
in Hong Kong in 1997. Three of 12 deaths -- two children and an adult --
in Vietnam since October had been confirmed to be due to the virus.
-
- "This mortality rate is far higher than that of
the SARS virus," Cordingley said.
-
- China and the WHO are battling to prevent another outbreak
of SARS, a respiratory disease that last year provoked a global health
crisis, killing nearly 800 among 8,000 infections in 31 countries.
-
- "The common human flu virus is far more infectious
than the SARS virus and can be spread by aerosol and not just through droplets
as in the case of the SARS virus," Cordingley explained.
-
- He cited two factors for the bird flu virus to be potentially
more dangerous than the SARS virus.
-
- "One is if it attaches itself to the common flu
virus and the second is that if this new virus is then effectively transmitted
like the common flu virus, we have the potential for widespread damage,"
he said.
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- Earlier, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
said authorities in Vietnam were being overwhelmed by the outbreak -- with
a possible two million chickens infected.
-
- "The authorities do their best to keep the situation
under control with the available means but the country is not prepared
for an event of that magnitude," Anton Rychener, FAO representative
in Hanoi, told AFP.
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- "We have to avoid transmission from human to human.
The situation is serious and worrying. But I would not say it is out of
control."
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- According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
the H5N1 virus can spread from poultry to people but not easily from person
to person.
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- The outbreak infecting Vietnam's poultry industry was
confirmed last week. It followed smaller outbreaks in South Korea and Japan,
which have yet to be fully contained.
-
- In Thailand, one of the world's largest poultry exporters,
press reports said thousands of chickens had succumbed to a mystery illness
in recent weeks, but authorities held firm that no bird flu had been documented.
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- South Korea said Wednesday it had clamped a quarantine
zone around a farm southeast of Seoul, where some 88,000 chickens and ducks
are being killed. The agriculture ministry was considering culling all
poultry in farms within a three-kilometer radius.
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- The highly contagious disease appeared to have been brought
under control in South Korea last month after hitting 15 areas nationwide
and forcing the slaughter of 1.8 chickens and ducks.
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- Japan has also appealed for calm, insisting the virus
is contained to a single farm.
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- Hong Kong, which slaughtered its entire poultry stock
of more than a million birds in the 1997 outbreak, has announced a ban
on the import of live birds from affected areas. Cambodia and Taiwan have
also announced limited bans.
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- Vietnam's agriculture ministry has ordered the destruction
of all chickens suspected of contracting the virus.
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- Containment efforts have been complicated by next week's
Lunar New Year festival of Tet, during which chickens are traditionally
eaten.
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