NZ expert warns on bird flu

By REBECCA WALSH and AGENCIES

As the lethal Asian bird flu spreads, fears are growing of more human infections and the chance of a novel virus developing with potentially devastating consequences worldwide.

A New Zealand virus expert at the centre of work to help tackle the outbreak said it was being treated as a serious global threat by the World Health Organisation.

Speaking from Manila in the Philippines, Dr Lance Jennings said he was "very concerned" as the outbreak among poultry in Asia continued to expand.

"I suspect we will see more human infections. As the number of human infections grows the risk of a novel virus increases. Whether that will happen we can't say."

However, Dr Jennings said should the virus get to New Zealand, the Ministry of Health had an influenza pandemic action plan which had been tested and updated since the Sars outbreak last year.

"The Ministry of Health is well prepared to respond to an emergence of such a novel virus."

Acting director of public health Dr Douglas Lush said the country was not at immediate risk but the ministry was in daily contact with the WHO. If human-to-human transmission was confirmed the National Pandemic Planning Committee would meet and make recommendations to the Director-General of Health.

As well as advice to health professionals, specific action it could take included travel advice to New Zealanders and setting up a call centre and website to tell people what to expect and do.

But he said New Zealand did not import live chickens or poultry products and no one had reported unusual chicken deaths at the country's chicken farms.

Migratory birds could introduce the virus and agriculture officials were monitoring them.

So far eight people - six in Vietnam and two in Thailand - have died after suffering confirmed cases of bird flu. More people are ill or dead from unconfirmed cases of the disease.

Millions of chickens in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan and South Korea have died from the H5N1 bird flu, sparking mass culls at farms and tight controls on poultry exports.

South Korea alone has killed 24 million chickens and ducks.

Unconfirmed reports say poultry in China, Laos, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia could be affected.

Dr Jennings, who was co-opted from Christchurch to the WHO's western Pacific regional office a week ago, said the greatest concern was the potential for the virus to develop into one that could be transmitted from human to human.

If a person with the influenza A virus contracted the bird flu, a novel virus could emerge from the mixed infection.

Humans would have no natural immunity to it, he said.

"These novel viruses have a devastating impact on communities and are associated with high morbidity rates, high infection rates and of course, high death rates."

It would take about six months before a vaccine could be developed against the virus.

Dr Jennings said in the past few years influenza outbreaks in New Zealand had typically started in Auckland and spread around the country within three to four weeks. Novel viruses spread more rapidly.

He said it was not possible to calculate the risk of a novel virus developing, but in the past 100 years three novel viruses had emerged, including the 1918 Spanish outbreak in which more than 50 million people were estimated to have died.

Some medical experts believed another pandemic was due, particularly given the slowly changing structure of the H5N1 virus.

The latest virus is a mutated form of the one that hit Hong Kong in 1997, killing six people.

Dr Jennings said there was a real sense of urgency among those working at the WHO, which was pulling together people from around the world to help health authorities in the region.