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Bird flu likely to spread in Asia

AP, Rome
The bird flu virus that has hit several countries in Asia is likely to spread to Europe, the Middle East, South Asia including Bangladesh and Africa, a UN food agency warned yesterday.
The Food and Agriculture Organization has urged nations at risk to increase surveillance and prepare national emergency plans. It warned the virus is likely to be carried over long distances by wild water birds.
It said India and Bangladesh, which currently seem to be uninfected, are also considered to be "at risk."
"Bangladesh, and to a lesser extent India, harbour large numbers of domestic ducks and are situated along one of the major migratory routes. They have the potential to become new large endemic areas of bird flu infection," the FAO warned.
Birds flying from Siberia, where the virus has recently spread, may carry the disease to the Caspian and Black Seas "in the foreseeable future," the Rome-based agency said.
"These regions and countries in the Balkans could become a potential gateway to central Europe for the virus," the FAO said in a statement.
The FAO said bird migration routes also run across Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and some Mediterranean countries and warned bird flu outbreaks in these areas were possible.
The H5N1 bird flu strain has killed almost 60 people in Asia, but it does not spread easily among humans - a situation experts fear could change if the virus mutates, leading to a dangerous pandemic.
In Russia, the outbreak has killed about 11,000 birds and prompted
officials to slaughter 127,000 others to halt the virus' spread. No human cases have been registered there.
Experts say they are concerned by the situation, but have also expressed optimism that European countries could stamp out bird flu before the virus takes hold and spreads among people.
Many experts said the virus would be detected more quickly in Europe than in Asia, and noted that people do not live in close quarters with animals, as they do in much of SoutheastAsia.
The European poultry industry also is better equipped to shelter its birds from contact with the wild ducks blamed for the disease's spread, experts said.
However, FAO's chief veterinary officer, Joseph Domenech, expressed concerns that "poor countries in southeast Europe, where wild birds from Asia mingle with others from northern Europe, may lack the capacity to detect and deal with outbreaks of bird flu."
In the statement, FAO also warned "as long as the H5N1 virus circulates in poultry, humans continue to be at risk."
The agency said countries at risk, especially those along the routes of migrating birds, should step up surveillance of domestic poultry and wild birds, as well as ready emergency plans. It said affected countries should battle the bird flu virus at its origin, in poultry.
"Close contacts between humans, domestic poultry and wildlife should be reduced and closely monitored. On farms and in markets, domestic birds should be strictly separated from wild animals to the greatest extent possible," said the agency. "Vaccinating poultry could also be considered in at-risk situations."