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GENEVA : The World Health Organisation on Sunday warned that European nations must not be lulled into a false sense of security about bird flu, following an outbreak among poultry at a British farm.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said Britain and Europe could just as easily be the source of the feared mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus that might trigger a human pandemic, as Africa and its blighted health care services.
"A mutation could occur anywhere. Someone was saying in relation to the British outbreak, 'Oh it won't happen in Europe'. That's really a kind of false security that is being built up," Hartl told AFP.
Scientists fear that the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu may mutate into a form that could be easily transmissible among humans, potentially triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Nearly 160,000 turkeys were being culled at a farm in eastern England on Sunday after the country's first major outbreak of the potentially lethal strain in poultry there. There have been no reports of any human infections in Britain.
Hartl made his comments in response to confirmation on Saturday that the H5N1 strain was responsible for the death of a 22-year-old woman last month in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria.
It was the first human case in the largely impoverished country, where avian influenza is widespread among poultry according to the Nigerian government.
Hartl explained: "It only takes one mutation. We don't know when that would happen or how it would happen or where, but it would suffice for the so-called 'correct' mutation to occur and the virus will become easily transmissible."
"That can as easily happen in the UK, in Europe, as in Asia or Africa." he added.
The WHO spokesman underlined that the key difference between Europe and parts of Asia or Africa lies in the separation between people and poultry, reducing the opportunity for an initial bird flu infection in humans.
"A mutation can happen anywhere, that's in the nature of the virus. But what is very different in Europe is the way chickens and turkeys are kept," Hartl said.
"Europeans, (north) Americans, Japanese, people in industrialised countries come into contact less often with chickens or birds. They don't live with them.
"The chances of someone in Europe contracting H5N1 are much smaller," he added.
Hungarian authorities also found an H5N1 bird flu outbreak among a flock of geese in southeastern Hungary last month, and moved swiftly to cull the infected birds and set up a surveillance area.
With the latest case in Nigeria, the total number of deaths worldwide since human cases were confirmed in Asia in 2003 has risen to 165, out of 271 human cases, according to the WHO.
At the moment, the H5N1 virus is mainly caught from exposure to infected birds or their carcasses, although there have been instances of limited human transmission. - AFP/de
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