Flu fears for hospitalised Belgian

A GERMAN minister has claimed the deadly bird flu is moving closer to infecting humans in Europe, while a Belgian man, who last week returned from China, has checked into a Brussels hospital with flu symptoms.

The man returned from a rural Chinese region where bird flu is endemic, on Saturday, and decided to go to hospital, on Monday, with high fever and strong headaches. He has been put into isolation while doctors run tests for H5N1.

No human cases of bird flu have been registered in the EU so far.

Two more German cats died of the virus, however, while China has reported its 10th human fatality.

Albania, meanwhile, became the latest European country to report an outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu strain, as international veterinary experts warned that the United States, Canada and Australia will probably not escape the disease.

China said yesterday that a nine-year-old girl had become the 10th person there to die from bird flu - bringing the global death toll, since 2003, to 96.

In Germany, Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said the discovery of the dead cats there - a week after the first feline infection in Germany - signalled a heightened risk of infection for humans.

"This means that the virus is not confined to a single case of a mammal, but has spread to several cases. Therefore, bird flu has clearly moved closer to humans," he said.

The two cats were found in the same area of the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen as a cat discovered dead there last week, which proved to be the first mammal in Europe to be infected with the virus - and is believed to have eaten infected birds.

Germany's national veterinary laboratory, however, said the risk of the EU's first human case had not risen as a result of the discovery of the two H5N1-positive cats.

The World Health Organisation has said there is no evidence that cats are involved in the spread of the disease.

Bird flu, which has already moved from Asia to Europe and Africa, will probably extend its reach, according to the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health, Bernard Vallat.

"The likelihood that this strain will appear in Australia is very high," he said, adding that "the possibility was also very high in the United States and Canada."