Avian influenza fight far from over

Friday, 20 February 2004 6:09 AM

The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday said the bird flu virus in Asia may take many years to control.

In a statement released in Vietnam, the WHO warned that "full control" was some way off in the countries affected by the A(H5N1) virus.

Health experts are urging Asian countries to remain vigilant so as to prevent further outbreaks of the avian influenza.

A WHO spokesman said the present situation in Asia was precarious, historically unprecedented and "extremely challenging".

"Countries need to maintain a high level of vigilance, and must not relax their surveillance and detection efforts," the spokesman said.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said it would be a year or more before the virus was under control.

Despite signs that the bird flu virus has receded among poultry stocks, Bjorn Melgaard, a WHO spokesman in Thailand, said the health organisation continued to operate in an "emergency, urgency mode".

"The bird epidemic is unfolding and continuing to spread at an unprecedented rate," he said.

"We would expect that we will see human cases in other countries that have the bird epidemic."

Countries are eager to declare themselves free of the virus so as to resume livestock exports and begin to rebuild their devastated poultry industries.

In Asia, 22 people are known to have died after contracting the virus. In Vietnam, 27 million birds have either died or been destroyed, with 30 million birds slaughtered in Thailand.

Canada has reported a case of avian flu on a farm in British Columbia and will cull 16,000 birds in the next few days as a result.

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