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Scientists try to identify bird flu strains found in Croatia, Sweden, Britain
08:40 PM EDT Oct 22

LONDON (AP) - Scientists were conducting tests Saturday to determine whether bird flu cases discovered in Britain, Sweden and Croatia are the lethal strain that has killed more than 60 people, as countries around the world scrambled to halt the spread of the virus.

Congo joined a growing list of African countries to ban imports of livestock and poultry from countries affected by bird flu and Russia recorded a new outbreak of the disease in a region of the Ural mountains.

In Croatia, the Agriculture Ministry said the country's first cases of avian flu were confirmed Friday in six swans found dead in a national park in the east of the country. British officials said a parrot from the South American country Suriname had died of the disease while in quarantine. It was Britain's first confirmed case of bird flu since 1992.

In both cases, tests were underway at a British lab to determine whether the birds had the deadly H5N1 strain, which has devastated poultry stocks across Asia and killed 61 people in the last two years. The strain has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania.

Sweden's National Veterinary Institute said late Saturday a case of bird flu had been confirmed in one of four ducks found dead on Friday in Eskilstuna, about 100 kilometres west of the capital Stockholm. Officials said it would take days to determine whether it was the H5N1 strain.

H5N1 is easily transmitted between birds but is hard for humans to contract. Experts are closely watching the disease, however, for fear it could mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans and cause a pandemic that could kill millions.

Fears of human-to-human transmission were allayed in Thailand, where health officials announced Saturday a father and son infected with bird flu did not transmit the virus to each other, as had been feared.

Dr. Thawat Suntrajarn, director-general of the Department of Communicable Disease Control, said the 48-year-old father and his seven-year-old son became ill after handling their neighbour's sick chickens. The father died; the son is recovering.

In Croatia, Minister of Agriculture Petar Cobankovic said "there is no room for panic" in the wake of the country confirming its first cases of bird flu, in wild migratory swans.
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/051022/w102278.html
Bird-Flu-World

More than 30,000 people could die in the next influenza pandemic if it is as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu, the Ministry of Health says.

The figure is contained in planning documents published yesterday which also warn oil companies to beef up security to protect against social unrest during a pandemic and suggest the health sector will not be able to cope.

The grim forecast comes as Europe rushes to contain the bird flu virus, fearing it could mutate and trigger a pandemic. Scientists also are working on creating an urgent vaccine for humans.

The European Union has begun an exercise to test countries' readiness to deal with a health crisis which could arise if the disease mutates and spreads among humans.

The New Zealand Health Ministry figure for potential fatalities would make it the country's worst health crisis.

Previously published scenarios for a flu pandemic were based on the 1968 outbreak and suggested that between 1600 and 3700 could die.

Health officials were careful to say the new figure was not the ministry's projection or prediction. It was simply a mathematical model, in which New Zealand's experience of the 1918-1919 global outbreak was applied to the present population.

The 1918 pandemic infected 40 per cent of people in New Zealand, of whom 2 per cent died. More than 8000 died and about 40 million to 50 million worldwide.
Based on New Zealand's population of 4,107,159, the 1918 figures translate to 1.64 million becoming ill and 32,857 dying.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...ectID=10351317
Ministry warns NZ of possible bird flu pandemic - 21 Oct 2005 - Health & Fitness