New Bird Flu Concerns Italy, France, Egypt, India

Countries from Europe to Asia struggled with fresh outbreaks of the troublesome avian flu virus. Scientists fear the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans and spark a global flu pandemic.

The virus can be spread to countries by bird migration, and scientists say it is likely it will eventually reach the United States.

India and France both confirmed their first outbreak of the deadly strain of bird flu among fowl, and on Sunday health officials and farm workers in western India began slaughtering a half-million birds to check the spread of the disease.

Bird flu has killed at least 91 people—most of them in Asia—since 2003, according to World Health Organization figures. So far, the virus has not morphed into a strain that easily infects people or that can be passed between humans.

In Indonesia, another man died from the H5N1 virus, bringing the nation's death toll to 19, a Health Ministry official confirmed Saturday.

The man, who died Feb. 10, had frequent contact with poultry, said Hariadi Wibisono, a health ministry official.

Italy & France

In Italy, a dead wild duck and six wild swans tested positive for the highly virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu, bringing the country's number of confirmed cases to 16, the Italian Health Ministry said Sunday.

Italian poultry sales have dropped 70 percent despite government efforts to isolate outbreaks and reassure consumers and poultry farmers warned that, without state aid, thousands would be out of business within a week.

France confirmed its first case of the H5N1 strain in a wild duck found dead in a bird reserve some 20 miles northeast of Lyon, France's third-largest city, the Agriculture Ministry said. All fowl have been ordered indoors or vaccinated there.

"There's a little bit of panic because we don't know what to do,'' said Madeleine Monnet, 60, in the town of Joyeux, where the diseased bird was discovered. "Here everybody has a little bit of fowl—chickens or ducks—for their personal consumption.''

German and Austrian authorities ordered all poultry and fowl kept indoors, and in Germany, 28 wild birds were diagnosed with the deadly strain on the same northern island where the country's first cases were detected earlier this week.

Egypt

Egypt's agriculture minister, meanwhile, said Saturday that the number of cases of bird flu in the country are not high enough to warrant large-scale slaughter of birds, but that authorities will act accordingly if the disease spreads.

There have been conflicting reports about the number of H5N1 cases found in Egypt, but the government said Friday there had been seven cases in three provinces.

"The disease is not at a level that leads to getting rid of large numbers'' of fowl, Amin Abaza told the Arabic-language Al-Arabiya satellite channel. "There are known international measures that are taken. Poultry within a certain radius get culled.''

India

Health officials and farm workers in protective gloves and masks slaughtered thousands of chickens Sunday in western India a day after the country's first reported outbreak of deadly bird flu.

Officials near the affected area reported that a 27-year-old poultry farm owner had died of bird-flu-like symptoms. Laboratory tests were pending and the case remained unconfirmed.

The Indian government announced an aid package for farmers Sunday following confirmation that at least some of 30,000 chickens that had died in Navapur, a major poultry farming region in western Maharashtra state, over the past week were infected with H5N1.

Authorities stressed no human cases had been confirmed as they awaited test results from the poultry farm owner who died.

"At this juncture we can only suspect that the cause of his death could be bird flu,'' Surat district officer Vatsala Vasudev told the Press Trust of India news agency.

Anees Ahmed, the state minister for animal husbandry, said "there have been no (human) deaths'' from bird flu but did not elaborate.

Eight people in the area also were hospitalized with flu-like symptoms and were being tested, but authorities said it was just a precaution.

"There is no indication they have any symptoms of bird flu,'' said Maharashtra Chief Secretary Prem Kumar, the state's most senior bureaucrat.

Mass slaughter

Some 500,000 birds will be slaughtered within a 1.5-mile radius to check the spread of the virus in the area, more than 250 miles northeast of Bombay.

More than 50,000 chickens have been killed in Navapur since early Sunday, Ahmed told The Associated Press. Top health officials were telling the heads of 52 big poultry farms that they must begin destroying their chickens.

India exports some $84.4 million worth of poultry and eggs annually, mostly to Europe and Japan and the Middle East. The past year has seen orders rise as countries such as Indonesia struggle to control bird flu. Japan opened its market to Indian poultry in November.

Nepal's government on Sunday banned poultry products from India. Bangladesh ordered increased security surveillance along its 2,500-mile border with India, fearing rampant smuggling could let in bird flu.

The majority of bird flu's human victims have lived in Asia, but recent deaths have been reported in Iraq and Turkey, according to the World Health Organization. Most human cases of bird flu have been through direct contact with sick birds, it says.

In Romania, preliminary tests indicated that the bird flu virus has infected birds in two more villages near the Black Sea, a region where the virus has already been detected, officials said Sunday.

Agriculture and health ministers from Arab League countries will meet in Cairo next month to coordinate efforts to prevent the spread of bird flu, League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said Sunday.

Editor's Note: This article is a compilation of two reports from the Associated Press along with LiveScience staff contributions.

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