Government vets have been criticised for advising private bird importers to mix consignments of birds from different parts of the world in the same quarantine facility.
Experts in European law said the regulations do not permit mixing of bird consignments from different countries because of the risks of spreading avian flu.
But that appears to have happened at a licensed quarantine facility in Essex where a consignment of parrots from South America was kept in the same quarantine unit as a consignment of exotic birds from Taiwan.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reported on Monday that a parrot from Surinam was probably infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu when it was kept in quarantine with a separate consignment of birds from Taiwan.
A senior government vet said mixing of consignments was allowed under EU quarantine regulations provided that all birds were kept under quarantine for a minimum of 30 days.
However, the EU regulations do not mention the possibility of mixing consignments of birds, said Cristiana Senni of the World Parrot Trust, a charity that has tried to ban the trade in wild birds.
"It's unbelievable that Defra can't understand the detail of the EU regulation on quarantines, which clearly states that each quarantine unit should hold only birds of the same consignment," Ms Senni said.
"This, of course, is an obvious requirement, otherwise the whole principle of quarantine would be useless, as this latest incident showed," she said.
Ms Senni cited the wording of the EU regulations governing bird quarantine, which states quarantine units much be kept operationally and physically separated from each other "and in which each unit contains only birds of the same consignment, with the same health status and being therefore one epidemiological unit".
Officials at Defra are investigating the circumstances that gave rise to the case of the H5N1 virus, which has killed 62 people in Asia, at a bird importer's quarantine facility in Essex.
Philip Tod, a spokesman for the European Commission, said: "The European Commission has so far received no information which suggests the UK authorities have breached the requirements. The UK authorities are still investigating the circumstances in this case and the Commission will wait for the outcome of that investigation to properly assess the situation."
The wording of the regulations distinguish between a quarantine centre, operating several units, and a quarantine facility, which is designed for small-scale importers bringing in one consignment at a time.
Ms Senni said the Essex importer was bringing in hundreds of birds in each consignment and was doing it professionally so his operation should have been considered a centre rather than a facility.
Meanwhile, Margaret Beckett, Environment Secretary, told MPs yesterday that Britain would introduce new measures to prevent the spread of bird flu.
Bird markets and fairs in Britain are to be banned to prevent an outbreak, a move that comes a day after the EU decided to outlaw the importation of exotic birds into Europe for the pet trade.
Mrs Beckett also said the question of why consignments of imported birds were allowed to be mixed was also to be considered.
It also emerged yesterday that preliminary tests conducted on three people who returned to the Indian Ocean French island of La Reunion after a trip to Thailand indicated they may be infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus.
The three people visited a bird park in Thailand during their trip there and had close contacts with birds, said Helene Monard, a French Health Ministry spokeswoman.
La Reunion authorities said that a 43-year-old man was taken to hospital with a fever and strong headaches on Saturday, three days after spending a week in Thailand. Nineteen others who also took the same trip were questioned about their health. Among them, two had flu symptoms and Mme Monard said their preliminary tests also were positive for H5N1.
"Although the symptoms are not very significant, there is thus a suspicion of flu of avian origin in the framework of a close contact with birds," the French Health Ministry said in a statement.
Bird flu is difficult to diagnose properly in preliminary tests, and false positives are not uncommon.
The EU said bird flu virus found in Croatia was the deadly H5N1 strain and advised citizens not to eat raw eggs or uncooked poultry.
African poultry farmers face economic disaster
Researchers fear the next stop for the bird flu which threatens a global pandemic will be Africa, where it could have a devastating impact.
The H5N1 virus is expected to be carried by migratory birds into the Middle East and east Africa within weeks, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said.
The journal Nature said the health and economic consequences could be worse than in south-east Asia where the virus is already widespread.
Ward Hagemeijer, from the conservation group Wetlands International in Wageningen, in the Netherlands, said: "Africa is on the main migratory route for birds. The first birds are already in east Africa." The pattern of the virus's spread points strongly to wildfowl travelling south-west from northern Russia to the African continent.
Outbreaks have been found along the route in Romania and Turkey, and controlled by culls and quarantine orders. Middle Eastern states have planned for possible outbreaks, but there has been little response in more vulnerable African countries, the report in Nature said.
Rural communities around the lakes of the Rift Valley depend heavily on poultry to survive, and live closely with domestic and migratory birds. An endemic H5N1 bird flu virus in Africa would greatly increase the chances of it mutating into a form that can spread between humans, triggering a pandemic, say experts.
The most immediate threat is economic disaster. Lea Borkenhagen, of Oxfam, told Nature: "Losing poultry would have a devastating effect on livelihoods. Women would be badly affected, because poultry are the only assets they can possess."
Few east African countries have systems to test for H5N1, and efforts to control outbreaks would be hampered by difficult terrain and low levels of education.
East African nations are to meet next month in Rwanda to develop a regional strategy to meet the threat.
John von Radowitz
Croatia said on Wednesday tests by the EU reference laboratory for bird flu had confirmed the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus strain in six wild swans found dead at a pond in eastern Croatia last week, said reports reaching here from Zagreb.
"Results from the laboratory in Weybridge (of Britain) confirmed the H5N1 virus, which shows that our measures were justified," veterinary expert Vladimir Savic was quoted as saying.
Since late last week Croatian authorities have detected bird flu from two groups of wild swans found dead in the West Balkan republic's rural northeast.
Samples from the first find at Grudnjak fish pond in Zdenci municipality on Friday were sent to the British laboratory for testing. The second group of dead swans was discovered about 15 kilometers away at Nasice fish pond on Monday.
Croatian health authorities said the dead Nasice swans would not be sent to Britain for further examination because they believed the swans were from the same flock.
"I once again urge poultry producers to take this seriously and keep poultry indoors. The situation is serious for the whole of Europe until a strategy is found, so I cannot say for how long the poultry will have to be kept indoors," Savic said.
The deadly H5N1 strain, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, has been detected in Romania, Turkey, Russia and in an exotic wild bird imported and quarantined in Britain.
Croatian authorities culled 27,000 poultry around the two fish ponds, where wild swans died of bird flu.
Agriculture Minister Petar Cobankovic said the government would pay some 800,000 kuna (130,000 US dollars) in compensation for the culled poultry starting from Thursday.
The European Commission this week banned exports of wild fowl, live poultry and certain poultry products from Croatia.
Source: Xinhua
Officials from all over the world will meet in Geneva in early November to discuss setting up a global fund to tackle the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus, a senior World Bank official said.
Jim Adams, the World Bank's chief for operations policy and country services, said the meeting - on November 7 to November 9 - would try to coordinate a global response to the H5N1 strain and identify shortcomings in veterinary and health systems.
"The intention is then to be prepared to go out more aggressively to raise some money to deal with those gaps," Adams told Reuters.
He said the trust fund would require initial donations of between $US300 million ($394.17 million) to $US500 million ($656.94 million) to help countries set up programs to deal with the risk of a pandemic of bird flu, which experts fear could eventually mutate enough to become transmissible among humans.
The H5N1 strain has already infected 121 people in four Asian countries and killed 62 of them, according to the World Health Organisation.
Adams said governments and organisations have become more aware of the threat as the virus has spread to the eastern edge of Europe from Asia.
"What has happened is that everyone has accepted that over time this is going to become a global issue and in that context (efforts have) been ratcheted up a level," Adams said.
"Like every issue, it has been actively discussed at the technical level and the point now is to get everyone in a room together to review what has been done."
The World Bank is also preparing its own response to bird flu through a financing mechanism that any country can seek access to, Adams said.
"After the Geneva meeting, we're hoping to be able to go to our board with a proposal and hopefully the first couple of countries that are interested actually participating in that," he said.
He said countries would receive their financial help through grant handouts rather than loans.
"Our honest sense is that in preparing for a potential problem, the challenge is always what can be done before it happens with the real possibility that it may not happen," Adams said.
Mark Wilson, director for rural development and natural resources for East Asia and Pacific region at the World Bank, said financial compensation to poultry farmers and producers for stock losses would be a major part of donor aid to governments.
He said it was important that governments establish in advance a "fair market value" for compensation, which will offer an incentive to farmers to report cases of Avian flu.
Wilson said programs to combat the spread of Avian flu would need to include proper surveillance to spot cases of the virus, strengthening laboratory testing and better coordination among ministries of agriculture and health.
"The key is to hit it at its source and hit it hard and if you do so, you can slow it down," Wilson said, noting that in hard-hit Vietnam the government was about to overhaul the poultry industry including removing livestock from urban areas.
Since the outbreak of Avian flu in Vietnam in 2003, the country has culled about 44 million birds or 17 per cent of its poultry at a cost of $120 million, or 0.3 percent of gross domestic product.
An internal World Bank document obtained by Reuters says the costs of Avian flu outbreaks in Southeast Asia have not had a major economic impact, but significantly hurt its poultry industry -- running at more than $US10 billion ($13.14 billion) since 2003.
The World Bank said the most direct economic impact of an avian flu pandemic would be through a fall in labor productivity. Other long-term affects would play out as the increased costs of preventing and treating disease reduced savings and investments. Reuters
Professor Hugh Pennington said the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) had reiterated long-standing advice related to salmonella in a "quite inappropriate" way.
He said the chance of a human catching the virus from eating an egg was "for all practical purposes, zero". That was down to several reasons, he said, including the fact that birds suffering from lethal diseases do not lay eggs.
The EFSA, which was deluged by calls "from all Europe" yesterday, attempted to play down its explosive remarks but then added to the confusion by issuing a statement containing the same comments in a slightly different form.
The row - with strong echoes of the salmonella-in-eggs scare that ended the former Tory minister Edwina Currie's political career and saw egg sales plummet - broke out as the government announced new measures to guard against bird flu spreading to British poultry.
There was heightened concern about the human form of the disease with the news that three tourists returning to the French Reunion Islands in the Indian Ocean from a week-long holiday in Thailand were feared to have caught it. They visited a bird park and may have been exposed to the disease there.
The British government, among others, moved to play down the idea that there was any real risk of catching bird flu from food, and Prof Pennington, of Aberdeen University, said the EFSA should have been more careful in issuing advice on chicken and eggs.
"I don't know why EFSA has played it this way," he said. "The advice not to eat under-cooked chickens and not to eat raw eggs is sound advice ... [but] this is long-standing advice which hasn't changed for 15 years. They have reiterated it again, but in the context of bird flu, which is quite inappropriate."
Prof Pennington said it was "quite wrong" to link eating chickens or eggs with a risk of catching bird flu.
"I think the chances of anybody catching bird flu from eggs is, for all practical purposes, zero. The sick birds with pathogenic bird flu do not lay eggs for a start - they are at death's door," he said.
"Bird flu is not having an effect on European [Union] poultry. It might in the future, but with the current awareness of bird flu, one dead bird and the guy running the henhouse will be jumping up and down wanting to know what it is.
"Even if people ate a dead bird, the virus is in the lungs and the guts, which are not consumed, and the virus is killed when it's cooked. Humans don't contract flu through food. There are several reasons piling on top of each other to say this is not a food-transmitted disease."
The 119 confirmed human cases worldwide had been mostly among "people who had close contact with live, sick birds, who are excreting large amounts of virus, not people sitting in restaurants", he said. The suspected cases of bird flu in La Reunion had still to be confirmed, he said, and the source of the infection would then have to be identified.
"It's early days yet to say this is the start of the pandemic, but we have to wait and see."
A spokeswoman for the French health ministry said the three people from the Reunion Islands had visited a bird park in Thailand and come into close contact with birds there. But there were reports in France that the tourists themselves claimed they had stayed in an air-conditioned bus.
They were said to be "doing well", possibly a sign that the positive test for bird flu had been a false alarm.
Meanwhile, the EFSA issued a statement which it summarised as saying "there is no evidence to suggest to date that avian influenza can be transmitted to humans through consumption of food, notably poultry and eggs".
However, the actual statement said the "possibility cannot however be excluded" and stated that this was being kept under review.
British consumers seem to be buying roughly the same amount of eggs and chicken as previously, but bird flu has been blamed for considerable drops in sales in mainland Europe.
When asked about the EFSA's comments on the theoretical risk from eating poultry, Dr Judith Hilton, the head of microbiological safety at the Food Standards Agency, echoed Prof Pennington's comments. She said : "It is something that, on scientific grounds, you can never entirely rule out. But, in practice, looking at the cases that are occurring in the Far East, they are people who are getting flu in the way that we normally get flu, through what we breathe."
In the House of Commons yesterday, the Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, announced that the government was planning to bring forward new regulations to combat the threat of a flu pandemic. Bird fairs, markets and shows will be banned, except where a risk assessment has shown that they can go ahead safely.
The regulations will also give legal effect to recent legislation enabling ministers to instruct poultry keepers to keep birds indoors, a measure that is being discussed with the industry but is not yet in force as no bird flu case has been confirmed in Britain, outside a quarantine centre in Essex.
Mrs Beckett told MPs that two parrots there had died of bird flu and that initial tests on a total of 32 dead birds had identified the virus in some of them.
Instructions have been issued for a case-by-case risk assessment of every bird released from quarantine, she said.
The birds in quarantine had been culled and staff who came into contact with them given anti-viral drugs, she said, adding:
"The quarantine system is succeeding in providing the protection that it is in place to deliver.
"That is not a reason for complacency. We are taking these developments very seriously, but they are not in themselves a cause for undue alarm."
Cutting through the panic: the facts about the virus and its transmission
Q So what exactly is avian influenza and where is it found?
A The H5N1 virus, known as avian influenza or bird flu, is a lethal virus found in the gut of a wide variety of poultry. It has been able to infect humans, but only in 119 confirmed cases. The worrying statistic is that just over half have died.
Q How do birds catch it and can they transmit it?
A They excrete the virus, which can then get into the guts of other birds as they forage for food.
There is a particularly high level of risk when the water birds drink from is contaminated.
Q Is there a very big risk of humans catching it?
A Humans are only thought to be at risk if they breathe in the virus. This means the bird excreta must be dried and powdered in the environment, then thrown up into the air and inhaled in significant quantities. This has led scientists to believe only people in close contact with birds, such as people working in poultry farms, are at serious risk.
However, pathogenic viruses like bird flu can get into the blood supply of infected birds. Drinking raw or slightly cooked chicken blood - a practice in Vietnam at some celebratory meals - is a potential source of human infection, although this has not been confirmed.
The fear is that the virus will mutate, either within birds or by mixing with human, or possibly pig forms of flu to become a disease that is both highly contagious and highly lethal. Some scientists have said this is "only a matter of time".
However, lethal viruses tend to get weaker as time passes, a process called attenuation, as those strains which kill their host also kill themselves.
There were two cases in Thailand of possible human-to-human transmission. However, these have been isolated examples which have not led to the feared pandemic strain.
Q Can you catch it from eating eggs or chicken?
A There is almost certainly no risk of catching bird flu by eating eggs, because sick chickens stop laying them and the bird flu virus lives in the animal's gut. Eating a chicken is also unlikely to be a risk, but few scientists are prepared to entirely rule this out.
Cooking food to 70C will kill the virus and it is a good idea with all meat to ensure it is thoroughly cooked to avoid exposure to bugs. There have been no confirmed cases of bird flu in European Union poultry, so eggs and chickens currently in the shops are believed to be safe.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Thailand and Indonesia have reported three additional human cases of bird flu, including one death, raising the total number of confirmed deaths from the virus to 62.
The case in Thailand is a 7-year-old boy in the Kanchanaburi Province who is now recovering. He is the son of a 48-year-old man who died last week from infection with the bird flu strain called H5N1.
These represent the first two cases Thailand has seen in a year, and it brings the total there to 19 infected, including 13 who died.
The World Health Organization, which announced the cases, did not say if there were indications the boy contracted the disease from his father, but outbreaks of the disease were reported in poultry in Kanchanaburi villages earlier this month.
So far, 121 infected people, including 62 deaths, have been reported in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. Nearly all those infected had experienced close contact with infected poultry. Disease experts are concerned, however, that the H5N1 virus could mutate to a form that passes more readily from person to person, which could lead to a global outbreak.
The threat of this scenario appears to be increasing. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization said last week that migratory birds could soon carry bird flu to the Middle East and east Africa, where close contact with poultry is common and the capability to control the disease is lacking.
"FAO is more concerned about the situation in eastern Africa, where veterinary services, due to various constraints, should have more difficulties to run efficient bird flu campaigns based on slaughtering infected animals and vaccination," Joseph Domenech, FAO's chief veterinary officer, said in a statement.
"If the virus were to become endemic in eastern Africa, it could increase the risk of the virus to evolve through mutation or reassortment into a strain that could be transmitted to and between humans," Domenech added. "The close proximity between people and animals and insufficient surveillance and disease control capacities in eastern African countries create an ideal breeding ground for the virus."
Domenech urged other nations to assist African governments in developing surveillance and control systems.
The two new Indonesian cases included a 23-year-old man from Bogor, West Java, who died Sept. 30. The other case, a 4-year-old boy from Sumatra Island in Lampung Province, has recovered and returned home.
The two cases were related and they lived in the same neighborhood, but the WHO statement said investigations determined the boy and man were exposed to infected poultry and "human-to-human transmission is considered unlikely."
The cases raise Indonesia's total to seven human infections and four deaths.
The deadly virus has spread to domestic poultry and wild birds in several different countries in recent weeks. Croatia reported an outbreak of the disease in wild swans; Turkey and Romania detected the virus in their poultry, and the United Kingdom found two infected parrots.
Urgent steps being taken by nations around the world to prepare for a worldwide outbreak continued this week. Austria's Ministry of Health and Women conducted a simulation exercise in Burgenland Province on Tuesday, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has formed a rapid response team to ensure anti-flu medications, such as Tamiflu, are available in the event of an outbreak.
"Making sure Americans are protected against an outbreak of Avian flu is one of FDA's top priorities," Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, acting FDA commissioner, said in a statement. "Americans can be certain that FDA has the best scientific minds working together to ensure we have enough Tamiflu and other medications and to quickly get it to doctors and patients, if ever necessary."
HONG KONG (Reuters) - A 12-year-old girl has died suffering flu-like symptoms in a village in central China where the mainland's third outbreak of bird flu in a week has been reported, the South China Morning Post said on Thursday.
If confirmed, it would be China's first known human death from bird flu which experts across the world fear could mutate to spread easily from human to human and become a pandemic.
He Yin and her 10-year-old brother fell ill about a week ago after eating a chicken that had died from an unspecified illness in the village of Wantang, the Post said, quoting their father, He Tieguang.
"We had dead chickens before and nobody has ever got sick because of that. So I thought it's okay," her father was quoted as saying.
So far there was no evidence linking her death to the outbreak of bird flu in the village in Hunan province and none of the adults in her family had shown any flu symptoms, the paper said. Doctors told her family she had died from fever.
The newspaper did not say when the girl died.
A spokesman for China's Health Ministry said he doubted the girl's death was caused by bird flu.
"We haven't received any relevant report on that and I have no information if health authorities there have done autopsy on the girl either," he told Reuters.
"To be honest, we don't even know how the chicken died."
China reported an outbreak of bird flu in Hunan this week following cases in northern Inner Mongolia and eastern Anhui province which it said had all been brought under control.
Farmers in Wantang said many birds suddenly died about 10 days ago, the Post said, adding that the girl's death had triggered fear in fellow villagers.
"We got rid of all our birds immediately after I heard the news," the Post quoted one villager as saying.
The World Health Organisation has said the H5N1 strain of bird flu is endemic in poultry in China and across much of Asia. Health experts fear it may only be a matter of time before it develops the ability to pass easily from human to human.
H5N1 has killed more than 60 people in four Asian countries and reached as far west as European Russia, Turkey and Romania, tracking the paths of migratory birds.
China has reported no human cases so far, but a Hong Kong girl on a family visit to the mainland died of pneumonia in eastern China's Fujian province in 2003.
Her father, who also died, and her brother tested positive for H5N1. Officials in Fujian said the virus had not originated in the province.
A top Hong Kong health official warned on Wednesday that the city must be "psychologically prepared" for the return of bird flu virus.
The virus made its first known jump from birds to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, killing six of the 18 people it infected.
(Additional reporting by Guo Shiping in Beijing)
Three people who recently returned to the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion from Thailand are feared to be infected with the potentially lethal bird flu virus, officials said.
French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand said in Paris that the "three people went together to Thailand where they visited a zoo and were in contact with birds."
He said initial tests carried out on Reunion, a French-ruled island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, had been positive, and samples were being rushed to Paris for further tests.
"We will have results for the first patient tomorrow," said Bertrand, adding that "for the moment these are only suspicions. Nothing has been confirmed."
Earlier authorities on the island said one 43-year-old man had tested positive for bird flu, while two other people who went on the trip had "flu-type symptoms" and are undergoing tests.
Thailand is one of a number of Asian countries where outbreaks of a virulent strain of the virus known as H5N1 have proved lethal to humans. The virus has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003.
The H5N1 strain is not transmissible between people, but scientists are concerned it could mutate with human flu strains to get the capability to spread easily, sparking a global calamity like the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic that killed millions.
A doctor at the Bellepierre hospital in the island's main city of Saint Denis which is treating the man and keeping him in quarantine said he was believed to have been exposed to the virus during a trip to a bird park in Thailand during a vacation taken October 12-19.
Authorities said the man was admitted to hospital on Saturday suffering from weakness and headaches.
Medical staff, concerned when he started coughing on Monday, took nose and throat samples to test for the strain of the H5N1 flu virus that has killed more than 60 people in Asia since late 2003.
"The first was inconclusive, the second was positive," the administrator's statement said.
"There is therefore a suspicion of flu of avian origin, even though the symptoms are not very indicative," it added.
The doctor at the hospital, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the patient was "doing well" and being treated with anti-viral drugs.
He explained that the quarantine was put in place as a preventive measure to avoid a possible hybrid mutation between the H5N1 virus and a common human flu virus.
The doctor speculated that the man might have only a "benign form" of bird flu.
Seventeen other people who went on the same trip to Thailand have been questioned about their health, authorities said.
The government administrator's office in Reunion said that given that H5N1 is not transmissible between humans no special measures were being taken for the man's family or the island's population of 780,000.
However it asked people planning to travel to countries affected by bird flu, "in particular Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, to avoid all contact with birds."
Reunion Island is located east of Madagascar, off the African coast.
The French health ministry's Health Monitoring Institute in Paris said that so far a dozen people who had returned to mainland France from countries hit by the spread of bird flu had been tested but none were infected.
The head of the institute, Jean-Claude Desenclos, told a parliamentary committee on bird flu that the tests were carried out because the individuals were deemed at risk of contamination after they detailed the nature of their trips.
They were differentiated from 200 other people who also complained of flu-type symptoms on arrival in French airports from contaminated countries but who were not thought to have been exposed to the virus.
HANOI, Oct. 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Vietnam is building a detailed action plan to combat bird flu more vigorously in case of epidemicoutbreak, local newspaper Youth reported Thursday.
At a meeting of the National Anti-bird flu Steering Committee on Wednesday, the Surveillance Sub-Committee put forth the plan with actions to be taken responding to three phases of the potential epidemic: pre-epidemic (bird flu outbreaks threaten human health, warning (there are human-to-human transmission of the disease), and large-scale spread.
At the warning phase, Vietnam should closely monitor all bordergates, isolate suspected cases of human infections, and follow health status of people coming to the country from affected area for 10 days, the sub-committee proposed.
If the epidemic occurs on small scale (some 25 people are infected with bird flu within two weeks), Vietnam should temporarily close schools, markets, restaurants, international airports, and ports in affected areas and high-risk ones. Besides,international meetings should be postponed, and public transport engagement be limited.
If facing large-scale spread (over 100 human infections are reported within two weeks), Vietnam should issue the national emergency state, asking all residents to wear facial masks, the sub-committee said.
At the meeting, Ly Ngoc Kinh, director of the Treatment Department under the Health Ministry, stated if the epidemic happened, some 10 percent of Vietnam's 82-million population would be infected with bird flu, and 1 percent of the population could die of the disease.
In such scenario, Vietnam would lack treatment facilities, since it currently has 1,047 hospitals, excluding those under the Defense Ministry, with a total of 127,000 beds. Many provinces, especially those in districts and provinces, encounter shortages of equipment, medicines, protective gears and ambulances, he stated.
Vietnam will need some 13 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (nearly 822.8 million US dollars) to treat bird flu patients in case of the epidemic outbreak. However, the ministry now has a fund of only 650 billion VND (41.1 million dollars).
Also on Thursday, the anti-bird flu steering committee of southern Ho Chi Minh City put forth urgent measures to deal with the potential epidemic which is predicted to affect 1.6 million residents of the city, of whom 80,000-160,000 would die.
The committee ordered households and army barracks in the city to stop raising fowls by Nov. 27. If outbreaks are spotted in neighbor localities, Ho Chi Minh City will ban the movement of poultry and related products in the localities into its territory.
Up to 91 Vietnamese people have been infected with bird flu since the disease started to break out in the country in late 2003.Of them 41 have died.
DISASTER management experts from across Asia will meet in Australia next week to draw up a bird flu battle plan, amid fresh fears the region is ill-prepared to tackle a pandemic.
Health Minister Tony Abbott yesterday denied an international flu expert's claim Australia's response plan was flawed.
But a senior official in the Department of Foreign Affairs warned Australia was more vulnerable to the deadly virus because neighbouring countries were not equipped for a bird flu outbreak.
"Unless this is dealt with properly in the countries of the region, then there is a higher risk to us," the official said.
More than 100 pandemic specialists from the 21 APEC countries will be at an avian influenza meeting in Brisbane on Monday.
Yesterday Prime Minister John Howard said an extra $8 million would be given to Pacific nations to help them prepare for a pandemic.
The Government also lifted a temporary ban on live bird imports from Canada and unveiled tough new quarantine regulations for the bird trade.
The European Food Safety Agency yesterday warned consumers against eating raw eggs and meat.
Deputy executive director Herman Koeter said there was no evidence of the virus spreading through food, but the possibility could not be excluded.
The same warnings have not been issued in Australia, but consumers are advised to properly cook meat to avoid any kind of food poisoning.
Bird flu is expected to hit Africa and the Middle East within weeks.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation fears the deadly H5N1 virus could cause more deaths and have a bigger economic impact than it did in South-East Asia.
Fears of the flu spreading deepened yesterday after China reported another outbreak while India said it was testing blood samples from 10 dead migratory birds.
Croatia said tests had confirmed the lethal H5N1 bird flu virus strain in dead wild swans last week.
Middle Eastern states have been preparing for bird flu. But little has been done in east Africa.
In this week's Nature journal, Dr Joseph Domenech, the UN's chief vet, said the risk of the virus mutating into a human-to-human strain would increase if it spread into Africa.
RMIT virologist Prof Greg Tannock said outbreaks in Africa were less likely to affect Australia.
"An infected human coming here from another country is a bigger risk to Australia than migrating birds," he said. - with Reuters
BEIJING - A bird flu outbreak sickened 2,100 geese in eastern China and killed about a quarter of them - the country's second outbreak reported in a week, a U.N. official said Tuesday.
The Agriculture Ministry confirmed Monday that the birds died of the H5N1 (search) virus near Tianchang, a city in Anhui province, said Noureddin Mona, the China representative for the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.
The ministry did not say where or when the geese were infected, Mona said.
A report to the World Organization for Animal Health (search), posted on the group's Web site, said the outbreak, detected Oct. 20, affected chickens and geese. It did not specify which kind of birds were infected with the virus. It said 140,000 birds had been vaccinated and that quarantines and other precautions were taken.
According to Mona, about 45,000 birds have been culled within a three-mile radius of the site.
"The situation is not only in China but in Asia," he said. "There's no question about its seriousness."
Bird flu has killed at least 61 people and tens of millions of chickens in Asia since surfacing in 2003. Most recently, Russia, Turkey, Britain and Romania have reported the disease in birds.
China has not reported any human infections.
Officials began stepping up preventive measures last week after H5N1 killed 2,600 chickens and ducks in a breeding facility in China's northern region of Inner Mongolia (search), sparking fears that the virus might spread to humans.
Health experts have warned that H5N1 could mutate into a form that can be easily transmitted between humans and cause a global pandemic that could kill millions.
The main cause of human infections is direct contact with poultry in slaughtering, butchering or cooking, or surfaces contaminated by their droppings, health officials say.
There is no evidence that properly cooked chicken or eggs can sicken people.
Such public health threats have been a politically sensitive subject for China's leaders since they were criticized for their slow response to severe acute respiratory syndrome, which first emerged in the country's south in 2002.
SARS (search) killed nearly 800 people worldwide before subsiding in 2003.
Chinese officials have been more aggressive in responding to bird flu outbreaks, though international experts are urging a rapid response and strong preventive measures.
BEIJING (Reuters) - The deadly bird flu virus has dominated headlines around the world, but China's own home-grown outbreaks remain largely taboo in the country's state-controlled media.
While China has been praised for prompt reporting to international agriculture and health organizations, its media has been mostly silent, showing limits to its transparency that could affect efforts to curb the disease.
"A government has its first responsibility to its citizens, not to the outside world and this flies in the face of that principle," said public policy expert Li Dun.
The country has grappled with at least six outbreaks in as many months of the H5N1 strain that scientists fear will mutate into a human pandemic. Two occurred in the last two days, in the eastern province of Anhui and the central province of Hunan.
But there was no buzz about bird flu in Beijing's streets.
"I think there has been bird flu in some southern places," said 25-year-old Zhang Ning, naming two provinces that have not been affected. "But I haven't seen anything on TV."
"If there was a big outbreak I'm sure they'd report it," said her friend Haibin, an accountant.
On being told there in fact have been outbreaks in the past week that resulted in at least 545 chickens and ducks dying in Hunan and 550 farm geese dying in Anhui, the friends laughed.
"In China this kind of information is always blocked," said Zhang.
China has preached a mantra of openness and accountability since it was widely criticized for its cover-up of the SARS virus, which contributed to the disease's eventual spread to 8,000 people around the world.
Chinese President Hu Jintao responded by sacking top officials, raising hopes the government would be more open about sharing information with its citizens.
"Information disclosure must be transparent to ensure public confidence in the authorities," the state-run China Daily said in an editorial.
LACK OF CONFIDENCE
But the English-language newspaper was alone among Beijing's main newspapers in reporting China's latest bird flu outbreaks.
A spokeswoman for the State Council Information Office surnamed Xi declined to comment on why the story was not carried in most media, adding the Hunan outbreak was reported in the Agricultural Daily.
The two-paragraph story ran on page four.
But an editor with a central daily said newspapers had been told not to report any more than instructed and that reports were being vetted by authorities.
"The main concern is fear of ... social panic reducing farmers' incomes," the editor said.
"Ordinary people have so little confidence in food safety, the agricultural officials are afraid specific reports would set off a panic."
Li, the public policy expert, said information was crucial for mobilizing people to control any emergency.
"In a healthy society, more information adds to stability, it doesn't threaten it," he said.
Scientists say a well-informed public could also help combat the spread of the disease.
"The general public should know basic information about hygiene and cleanliness -- regular washing of hands, avoiding close prolonged contact with sick poultry and ways to deal with poultry that have died unusually," said Aphaluck Bhatiasevi, spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Beijing.
So far Beijing residents remain blissfully unaware.
"There's no bird flu in China," said a pedestrian surnamed Liu. "Not for the past half a year already. We have no problems with that."
MARK COLVIN: The world has failed to come up with a clear response plan in the event of a major outbreak of avian influenza.
Health ministers from around the globe have ended their conference in Canada with little progress to report on how they'd work together in the event of a global pandemic of bird flu.
Australia continues its prevention efforts, offering $8-million over the next four years to help Pacific nations detect and deal with the disease.
In addition, live birds coming into Australia will face tougher quarantine conditions from now on.
Karen Percy reports.
KAREN PERCY: Thirty countries joined the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations to look at a coordinated approach to a pandemic.
Their conclusion after two days of discussions in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, that the WHO and its significant stockpile of vaccines would lead the global response.
The US Health Secretary, Mike Leavitt, says governments need to ensure people are prepared, but don't panic.
MIKE LEAVITT: To find the balance between informing and inflaming what we do know is that there will likely be another pandemic, whether it be H5N1 virus, whether it be the spark that establishes that is unknown to us. Our objective is to prepare for the short and the long-term.
KAREN PERCY: Much of the discussion focused on how to manufacture enough of the treatments to deal with an outbreak, and whether to override the patents held by the likes of Swiss firm, Roche, which produces Tamiflu, the leading drug used to combat human flu.
That would allow other companies to produce antivirals.
But it’s not a plan that’s supported by the Australian Health Minister, Tony Abbott, who attended the meeting.
TONY ABBOTT: This idea that somehow we could have as much Tamiflu as we want, if only Roche would allow people, it’s just not right.
KAREN PERCY: Roche has already increased production of the drug, now making it in the United States as well as Switzerland.
It's also looking to outsource some production.
But Roche has stopped selling Tamiflu in Canada for the time being.
The company fears there won't be enough supplies to deal with the approaching flu season in North America, because large numbers of ordinary citizens have been buying up the drug in order to have their own supply.
In Australia, Roche has run out of Tamiflu, but is expecting new supplies next month.
The meeting offered little, if anything, to the poorer nations which will be most affected and least able to deal with a pandemic.
A motion from Mexico and Thailand, that richer nations to contribute 5 to 10 per cent of their stockpile of vaccines to poor nations failed to pass.
While there might be a lack of consensus amongst the countries attending the summit, there are greater worries about the nations that aren't doing anything at all, like many in sub-Saharan Africa.
Paul Gilchrist is a veterinary consultant specialising in poultry diseases, who recently visited Africa.
PAUL GILCHRIST: Well, the African situation with regard to the poultry industry is very similar to that in South East Asia, in that there are very many village chicken flocks and they are spread all over the country, and therefore, if the virus did get in and got into these poultry flocks, the situation would be very similar to that in South East Asia, and it could spread around.
KAREN PERCY: Like Australia, countries in southern Africa aren't as vulnerable to disease carrying migratory birds, but Paul Gilchrist says an outbreak is still possible.
PAUL GILCHRIST: Ducks and geese tend to be, in Africa this is, tend to be very similar to those in Australia, in that they are localised and they follow the rainfall around, so when there’s a good water supply around they’ll fly off to a new spot and avoid dry areas.
So if it got into them, they could spread it. But the chances of it getting into them is not much higher than it is within Australia.
KAREN PERCY: The difference, he says, is that unlike Australia, African countries don't have any plans in place to deal with an outbreak.
MARK COLVIN: Karen Percy.
New Delhi: The Health Ministry has said India needs at least 10 lakh doses of Tamiflu, the anti-bird flu drug.
The ministry is talking to Roche, the parent company that produces the drug, and Glaxo Smithkline, which makes a variant.
While the government is open to allowing local manufacture of the drugs, there is an acute shortage of raw material, star anis, which is grown mainly in China and Germany.
"Even if we allow the local manufacture, where is the raw material," says P K Hota, Union Health Secretary.
Global demands
Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has also made it clear that while Roche has an existing process patent for Tamiflu in India, it has also applied for a product patent here, which is still pending.
The patent office is studying how to make it legal for Indian companies to produce the drugs in this situation, especially since Roche doesn't have the capacity to meet the sharp global demand.
"There are three ways to procure drugs --one from Roche, second from WHO and third from Indian companies themselves but they have to come forward," says Ramadoss.
Currently, the World Health Organisation has a stock of 30 lakh doses and it is confident that it is in a position to step in and provide drugs in case of a possible outbreak.
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The deadly bird flu virus could be killing off chickens in an African village right now.
But it could very well go unnoticed.
Even though no bird flu of any kind has been detected in Africa, experts say detecting and controlling the virus should it occur in the continent's rural hinterlands could prove a Herculean task.
The informal nature of production and the fact that mortality rates among Africa's backyard chickens are already high would make detection harder.
And poor infrastructure, limited resources and the reluctance of peasants to part with their only source of protein or income if governments decided to cull would make the disease harder to contain.
"A lot of these villages are remote and disease is a way of life in them," said Celia Abolnik, a senior researcher at South Africa's Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute.
"Newcastle disease can wipe out 80 percent of a flock but never get reported because no one is going to take a dead chicken and walk for kilometres to report it," she said.
Newcastle disease, widespread in Africa, can be deadly for birds but is not dangerous for humans. The H5N1 form of bird flu can be fatal in birds and has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia after it mutated.
Scientists greatest fear is that H5N1 will mutate into a form that will pass easily among people, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions and cripple the global economy.
"The existence of other diseases such as Newcastle can mask the incidence of the avian flu virus and make it difficult to isolate and monitor," said Nancy Morgan, a commodity specialist at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
BACKYARD SCAVENGERS
According to a recent article in the "World's Poultry Science Journal", about 80 percent of the poultry population in Africa is estimated to be found in "traditional scavenging systems" instead of commercial operations.
These are backyard chickens raised for family consumption or informal markets.
"The most striking problem in relation to village poultry production is the high mortality: Mortality rates may be as high as 80 to 90 percent within the first year after hatching," write the authors of the article.
"Newcastle disease is believed to be the most devastating disease in free-range systems," they say.
So if lots of chickens die in a remote Congolese or Kenyan village it might sound no alarm bells.
South Africa is probably the best prepared country on the continent to detect the disease with a rural network of government animal technicians and a programme for monitoring wild birds.
At the village level women and children would be the most vulnerable to bird flu since they usually handle the live birds.
West Africa is considered less at risk than East Africa, where experts say wild fowl migrating through the region's Rift Valley stop off on water ways, a possible conduit for the virus.
And given Africa's already high burden of human diseases such as AIDS and malaria human deaths from bird flu in an isolated area might be attributed mistakenly to other causes.
LIVELIHOOD
Chicken is a major source of protein on the world's poorest continent and in many rural hamlets it is virtually the only available meat.
According to FAO data, Africa's poultry inventory is around 1.5 billion birds. Production is estimated at 3.5 million tonnes per year, 28 percent of all meat production while annual poultry imports to the continent amount to less than a million tonnes.
Studies suggest village-raised hens only lay around 30 eggs per year compared to 300 for their industrialised battery counterparts.
And given high mortality rates villagers are unlikely to give their birds up easily to state officials for culling in the event of an outbreak.
"I depend on the chickens, it is the livelihood of my family, I educate my children with the proceeds," said vendor Philip Okaro as he stood by dozens of clucking birds in a cage on a bustling street in a Nairobi suburb.
"I would not allow the government to stop my business, unless they agree to feed my family," he said.
Kenyan agriculture officials would not comment when asked if compensation would be paid to producers in the event of culls to contain the virus. South Africa pays producers the "market value" for any animals it culls. (Additional reporting by Guled Mohamed in Nairobi)
Budapest (dpa) - Hungary's newly-developed vaccine against the H5N1 virus will be authorized for use from the end of March next year, the health minister told a press conference Wednesday.
Jeno Racz emphasized that so far no cases of bird flu have been discovered in Hungary, but that the process of procuring a permit for the vaccine could be brought forward if necessary.
A swan found dead on the Hungarian-Austrian border, and around 20 dead pigeons discovered near the Hungarian-Romanian border, all tested negative for the H5N1 virus this week.
Hungary last Friday declared that human tests of the vaccine were successful after volunteers developed antibodies against the virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO), however, last Wednesday cast doubt on the point of the vaccine.
The H5N1 strain - which killed over sixty people in Asia and is now spreading through Europe - cannot currently be transmitted from human to human.
Experts are, however, worried that it could either mutate or combine with more common flu viruses to cause a pandemic that would kill hundreds of millions of people.
"At the moment, it's all guesswork as to what the virus could be once it mutates. H5N1 is our best guess, but we simply don't know," said the WHO's communicable diseases department's spokesperson, Maria Chang.
"Vaccinating would have no practical purpose and is only useful for reassuring the public," she continued.
MARK COLVIN: The World Health Organisation’s been talking about avian flu for seven or eight years now, national and international authorities have been giving it major coverage for at least the last year, but some widespread misconceptions remain.
One is that because SARS proved relatively easy to contain in a couple of centres, avian flu will too.
But Tim Brookes, author of a book on SARS called Behind the Mask, says that's a myth: bird flu really is a much bigger threat.
He's also just released a book on America's flu vaccine shortage last year, and he says the world just hasn't come to terms with the crucial questions about vaccination.
On the phone from Champlain College in Vermont, I asked Tim Brookes first whether there was any cause for complacency in the SARS experience.
TIM BROOKES: SARS was, in some respects, a sort of a wake-up call, and it really shook the countries, especially that had sizeable outbreaks, absolutely to their foundations. And nobody who’s been to Hong Kong or to Toronto ever is going to regard SARS as just a hiccough.
On the other hand, SARS really didn’t transmit all that easily. You really had to be quite close to a person at a very particular period in the development of the disease in order to catch it.
Flu, you tend to be able to catch even before the person has any symptoms. It spreads much more easily.
If this were, in fact, to mutate and become some kind of fatal strain of influenza it would actually spread much more easily than SARS did.
MARK COLVIN: Now, it’s already been very well publicised that we can’t really start preparing the vaccines until that mutation does occur.
But, when that happens, how hard is it going to be to get the stocks of vaccines up?
TIM BROOKES: One of the things that I found in looking at the US vaccine, flu vaccine, shortage of about a year ago is that we can pretty much take it for granted that there will not be enough vaccine, for whatever reason: either because people aren’t, the governments aren’t spending enough money on it, or because the particular type of flu is developing in ways that are hard to predict, or the capacity isn’t there or whatever.
We can pretty much guarantee there’s not going to be enough vaccine.
The really interesting questions, and really in some respects the really ghastly questions, come when it comes to determine, okay, so who gets the vaccine that you do have? Do the health care workers get the first doses? Do the emergency workers like the firemen and the police?
And here’s another interesting ethical question, you know, let’s say Australia, for example, generated enough vaccine to vaccinate every man, woman and child, you know, in Australia.
What then happens when you discover that all of the neighbouring countries, lets say Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, all that area, they don’t have it?
Then you have this terrible, sort of, ethical dilemma where you have the developed nations able to take care of themselves and the developing nations just dying like flies.
MARK COLVIN: Do you think any country is really ready for these questions yet?
TIM BROOKES: No, I don’t think so at all. I haven’t heard about these particular debates.
And in fact one of the things that’s disturbing to me about focussing the whole thing on a vaccine-based debate is that the ethical questions, and also the infrastructural questions, have barely been addressed at all.
And so it can seem as if, if you say, "Yes, we’ve got vaccine," everything’s taken care of, but in fact that is absolutely not the case.
One of the things that happened, for example, during the vaccine, the flu vaccine shortage in the United States a year ago was that in many cases you have to have this enforced redistribution taking place, where your public health services have to go to, for example, doctors or clinics who’ve actually got, you know, 100 doses, 1,000 doses of vaccine in their fridge and say, "No, you’ve got to give it back to us because we need to give it to somebody who’s in greater need."
Now, this was only in the case of a conventional..
MARK COLVIN: Just the standard flu vaccine.
TIM BROOKES: Precisely.
If it was a potentially fatal flu, then these questions had better be sorted out ahead of time, otherwise there’s going to be murder taking place..
MARK COLVIN: And if it is?
TIM BROOKES: and?
MARK COLVIN: And if it is, as you say, going first to firemen and ambulance workers and people who work in hospitals, you can imagine that there’ll be mothers of small children, for instance, beating down the doors of hospitals and clinics to get it.
TIM BROOKES: Yes, absolutely right.
And that’s the debate that I haven’t heard going on that is the really scary part because, again, what the SARS experience showed was that you can have a well-developed, competent medical system which can be brought virtually to its knees, and the society can be brought virtually to the brink of utter anarchy and destruction, simply by overstressing the health infrastructure - nothing to do with health technology at all, just the health infrastructure.
MARK COLVIN: You could fix the systems, but is there a basic blockage in terms of the way that vaccine is manufactured?
TIM BROOKES: The whole process of manufacture of vaccine is slow and laborious and it does involve breeding in chicken eggs, but there’s no revolutionary new method that is really close to development at all.
In other words, it’s not as if all the governments in the world got together and said, "If we put, you know, $100-billion into this particular new kind of cell-based production, we would therefore be able to turn out any vaccine we wanted at much higher speed."
The alternative methods of production have really been studied over and over for 20 or 30 years, and it doesn’t look as if there are any magical solutions to the vaccine production anywhere in the immediate future.
MARK COLVIN: Tim Brookes, the author of A Warning Shot: Influenza and the 2004 Flu Vaccine Shortage.
An international pharmaceutical firm has warned Web users to be cautious as spammers see a profit in the potential flu pandemic
Medical experts have warned Internet users about spam which links to a Web site supposedly selling avian flu antiviral drugs.
An increasing amount of junk mail has been detected which claims to sell Tamiflu, the antiviral medication believed to be most effective against the H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus.
The spam emails urge recipients to protect themselves and their families from the bird flu virus by purchasing Tamiflu from a Web site. This Web site also supposedly sells Viagra, and a number of other medications.
Roche, the pharmaceutical company that produces Tamiflu, had not heard of the spam or the Web site, but said that it was "unfortunate to hear about it".
Roche advises people not to purchase Tamiflu from the Internet as the drug is a prescription medicine, and also because there are no guarantees that people would get authentic antivirals.
"We don't recommend patients purchase from the Internet, firstly because the medication is prescription only and so should be prescribed by a doctor, and secondly because we can't be certain of the authenticity and integrity of the medicine. Counterfeit medicines are often sold by this route," a Roche spokesperson told ZDNet UK.
The British Medical Association also recommended that people do not buy drugs over the Internet, as the drugs may interact with other medication even if they are authentic.
"We recommend that patients don't purchase drugs online. Prescription drugs need the expertise of a doctor to administer. Drugs might interact with other medication a patient is taking, or with a pre-existing medical condition," said a spokesperson for the BMA. The BMA also recommended that people do not attempt self-diagnosis.
Sophos warned that spammers' motives for sending the email were purely financial.
"It may make a change from receiving junk email about Viagra, but you should never ever buy drugs online, as you could be putting your health in mortal danger. Spammers are not interested in people's health, they're only interested in making fat profits," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"Drugs like Tamiflu should be prescribed by legitimate doctors, not quacks on the Internet. Buying medicine online, from a Web site advertised by spam email, is like playing Russian roulette," Cluley said.
Tamiflu is in high demand because of fears that the current outbreaks could become a pandemic. Roche have urged people not to rush out and buy the drug.
"Don't panic-buy Tamiflu, there is a pandemic plan in place and the Department of Health have it stockpiled. We would like to stress that there is not actually a pandemic yet, and the risk of one is low," said the Roche spokesperson.
SAINT-DENIS-DE-LA-RÉUNION (Reuters) - Authorities in France's Indian Ocean island of La Reunion said on Wednesday a tourist who had recently returned from Thailand was in hospital with suspected bird flu.
"It concerns a suspected case of bird flu although the symptoms are inconclusive," the island's administration said in a statement.
It said two tests on the 43-year-old man for the H5N1 avian influenza virus had shown different results -- one had been uncertain, the other positive.
The man was admitted on Saturday to the Bellepierre hospital in Saint-Denis-de-la-Reunion, showing signs of weakness and severe headaches. The virus tests were carried out after he developed a cough on Monday.
The man, who had spent a week in Thailand from October 12 to 19 as one of a group of 20 tourists, is now under observation and has been given antiviral drugs.
The 19 other people in the group were also examined and questioned on their state of health. Two showed flu symptoms and were tested, but the results are not yet known, the administration said.
(CBS/AP) European health officials end a three-day review Wednesday of the continent's readiness to contain a possible flu pandemic, as tests confirmed the deadly strain of bird flu had reached Croatia.
World Health Organization and EU experts have been meeting in Copenhagen since Monday to analyze the threat of the bird flu virus mutating into a type that can be spread easily between humans.
There is no evidence that the deadly form of bird flu can be transmitted to humans through consumption of food, but poultry and eggs should be thoroughly cooked to avoid the possibility, the EU food agency said Wednesday.
"Whilst it is unlikely that H5N1 could be passed on to humans by raw meat or eggs, cooking food properly would inactivate the virus and eliminate this potential risk," the agency said in the statement.
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera noted Wednesday that a warning against raw eggs "might be the end of mayonnaise, steak tartare and tiramisu."
At the start of the meeting, experts said Europe was better prepared to contain outbreaks of bird flu than Asia because of better resources and communication between countries.
The EU Commission announced Wednesday that the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia, was found in dead swans in Croatia. It was detected earlier in birds in Romania, Russia and Turkey, raising fears it could spread to the rest of Europe.
On Tuesday, the EU said it would ban the importation of exotic birds and impose stricter rules on the private ownership of parrots and other pet birds. Last weekend, a parrot imported from Suriname died in quarantine in Britain after contracting the H5N1 strain. It was believed to have been infected by other birds in quarantine.
Slovenia, Hungary and France were also testing birds found dead for signs of bird flu, underscoring the sensitivity of the issue even though officials have urged Europeans not to panic.
The European Commission assured people Wednesday that eating eggs would not put them at risk of contracting bird flu.
"We don't think there is a risk of avian flu from the consumption of eggs whether raw or cooked," the commission's public health spokesman, Philip Tod, said.
The virus is hard for humans to contract, and most of the 62 people in Asia who have died from the disease since 2003 were poultry farmers directly infected by sick birds.
In related developments:
German authorities on Wednesday ordered that all poultry be given only tap water to drink in addition to being kept indoors in efforts to prevent their coming into contact with infected migratory wild birds. Officials said preliminary tests on wild geese found dead there had come back positive for bird flu - though they had died of poisoning - and further tests were being carried out to see if they carried H5N1.
The Chinese government on Wednesday, meanwhile, announced that a bird flu outbreak has killed 545 chickens and ducks in a village in central China - the country's third case of the disease in two weeks. The outbreak in Hunan province prompted authorities to destroy 2,487 other birds in an effort to contain the virus, the Agriculture Ministry said in a report posted on the Web site of the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.
Croatian authorities said they slaughtered all domestic poultry in four villages near a Nasice pond where two of 13 swans found dead tested positive for bird flu on Monday.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, European health officials said the continent was better prepared to contain outbreaks of bird flu than Asia because of better resources and communication between countries.
India's government has stepped up its observation of bird populations and plans to stockpile anti-viral medicines, but the country faces no immediate bird flu threat, the Health Ministry said Wednesday. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the government would be talking to Swiss company Roche Holding AG, which makes the influenza drug Tamiflu, and to Indian companies that could make generic copies in a bid to build up a stock of at least 1 million courses of the drug.
The British government said Wednesday that the bird flu virus found in two quarantined birds last week had probably come through Taiwan. Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett told the House of Commons that the premises in which the two infected parrots were found had received two consignments of exotic birds from Taiwan and Surinam.
Indonesia was investigating the deaths of dozens of backyard chickens on the resort island of Bali Wednesday amid fears they may have had bird flu, officials and residents said. "It's too early to say if this is bird flu," said Ida Bagus Raka, the chief of Bali's animal husbandry department, after visiting Padang Sambian, a village on the outskirts of the island's capital Denpasar.
The Government is to bring forward new regulations soon to combat the threat of a bird flu pandemic, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett announced today. The measures follow the earlier announcement of a one-month Europe-wide ban on live bird imports.
Bird fairs, markets and shows will be banned except where a risk assessment shows they can go ahead safely.
The regulations will also give legal effect to recent legislation enabling ministers to instruct poultry keepers to keep birds indoors. Mrs Beckett told MPs that her department now believed the H5N1 bird flu virus which killed two parrots in UK quarantine probably came via Taiwan.
Initial tests on 32 birds which died in quarantine before October 16 identified the H5 strain in some of them. Instructions have been issued for a case by case risk assessment of every bird released from quarantine, she said.
Mrs Beckett said it was not possible to say definitively where the H5N1 virus had originated in the two dead parrots.
"Our working hypothesis, taking account of the identification of the particular strain, is that the virus is most likely to have come via Taiwan, but it is important to keep an open mind about other possible sources and we are doing exactly that."
The birds in quarantine had been culled and staff who came into contact with them given anti-viral drugs.
Some birds had already died in quarantine before October 16 and while initial tests identified that H5 was present in some, the full circumstances of the deaths had not yet been established.
Quarantine 'still working'
"The quarantine system is succeeding in providing the protection that it is in place to deliver," she said. "That is not a reason for complacency.
"We are taking these developments very seriously but they are not in themselves a cause for undue alarm.
"Avian flu does not at present transmit easily to humans." Britain's disease-free status on avian flu remained unaffected. But ministers and officials must remain vigilant.
Mrs Beckett said about 15 consignments of birds remained in quarantine and their release would be assessed on a case by case basis.
An EU wide ban on the import of live birds was now in place and ministers were looking at ways of clamping down further on illegal imports.
Mrs Beckett said she planned to bring before MPs "within the coming days, sensible and measured regulations, which will assist us in reducing the risk of disease and strengthening our ability to control an outbreak".
They would establish a register of commercial poultry producers. She said the possibility of keeping poultry indoors was being urgently discussed with the industry.
'Is Tamiflu A Prescription For Survival?'