Increased WHO fears as cats catch bird flu

BIRD flu has killed three house cats in Thailand, a development the World Health Organisation described as “very dangerous” because of pets’ close contact with people.

Thai vets urged pet owners to stay away from their cats if their neighbourhoods are also home to chickens, which, together with ducks, have been the main victims of bird flu as it sweeps through Asia killing millions of birds and 22 people.

House cats are the latest in a string of species found to be infected with bird flu. Khao Khiew Zoo, near Thailand's capital, Bangkok, discovered one of their white tigers had the virus, but the animal recovered and is in good health.

A clouded leopard died of bird flu at the same zoo last month the first mammal apart from humans known to have been killed in this year's outbreak.

Health experts are concerned about bird flu affecting other animals, in part because that could prompt mutations in the virus that makes it easier to pass among people.

WHO viral expert Dr Prasert Thongcharoen said the infection of the three cats in Nakhon Pathom province outside Bangkok is "very dangerous because pets are very close to humans".

So far, cases in people have been traced largely to direct contact with infected chickens and other birds, or their faeces.

"It's quite a serious problem," said UN Food and Agriculture Organisation Director General Jacques Diouf.

"Unless we deal with it very seriously, there is the risk not only of other birds contracting it but also other animals, and naturally we have also seen the effect on humans.

"That's why it is necessary that we cooperate together in the region."

A WHO official said it is possible that Indonesia could have human cases despite government claims to the contrary.

"It's such a large country and such a large population ... it may have been diagnosed as ordinary pneumonia," Georg Petersen said, adding that health officials have stepped up efforts to inform doctors of the virus.

Cambodian authorities are testing a man, suffering from a fever and cough, suspecting he is infected with bird flu, a WHO official said.

China yesterday confirmed two more outbreaks of avian influenza in birds on opposite sides of the country Shaanxi province in the north and Yunnan province in the south.

16 of China's 31 regions are now fighting the disease.

Canadian officials are testing samples of a mild bird flu virus that has been detected and isolated on a British Columbia farm.

Officials said the outbreak of the H-7 avian flu is "certainly not" the same version of the virus that has hit poultry stocks and killed people in Asia, which is known as the H5N1.

Officials in the US states of Delaware and New Jersey are currently tackling outbreaks of the H-7 avian flu in poultry.