Discovery of bird flu in pigs sparks outbreak alert

THE discovery of a deadly bird flu strain in pigs in Malaysia signals a major winter outbreak is likely, international health experts said yesterday.

Since a strain deadly to humans emerged in Asia several months ago, scientists have voiced fears the flu could mutate and spread.

Adding to concern was an announcement by a Chinese scientist that pigs in China had been infected with bird flu. The World Health Organisation said the discovery did not come as a complete surprise.

A strain of bird flu blamed for 27 deaths in Asia this year was found in Malaysia this week and hundreds of birds were gassed and their carcasses burned to contain the outbreak.

The latest deaths from the H5N1 strain of avian influenza were of three people in Vietnam earlier this month.

“This is a great concern. It says to me that the virus is endemic in the region,” virologist Dr Robert Webster of St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, told a Beijing symposium.

China had found pigs infected for the first time with bird flu in 2002 and 2003, Chen Hualan, a member of the China Academy of Agriculture, told a conference on avian flu and SARS.

“This is a somewhat dangerous signal for public health,” she said.

The fear is that human and bird flu virus could mix in pigs and form a strain more easily transmittable to humans.

The outbreak in Malaysia was the country’s first and no human cases have been confirmed.

But three people suffering from cold symptoms have been admitted to the hospital and put in quarantine.