Killer bird flu ‘may be worse than SARS’

THE bird flu that has raged through chicken farms in Asia and killed at least three people in Vietnam could become a bigger problem for the region than SARS, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

The avian flu has killed millions of chickens in South Korea, Vietnam and Japan, where officials have ordered mass culls to try to contain the outbreak. Hong Kong and Cambodia have banned poultry imports from countries affected by bird flu.

WHO says tests are being done to determine if the deaths of nine additional people in Vietnam are linked to the disease, but has stressed that there has been no person-to-person spread of the disease. Health officials attribute infections in humans to contact with the droppings of sick birds.

If the virus develops the ability to spread through human contact it could become a big health crisis, WHO regional coordinator Peter Cordingley said in Manila, Philippines.

It's "a bigger potential problem than SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) because we don't have any defences against the disease," Cordingley said. "If it latches on to a human influenza virus, then it could cause serious international damage."

The bird flu scare comes just as China grapples with new cases of SARS, another ailment believed to have originated in animals and which ravaged the region's economy in a major outbreak last year.

China last week confirmed its first SARS case of the season, and has since announced two additional suspected cases, all in southern Guangdong province, next to Hong Kong.

The three avian flu deaths in Vietnam an adult and two children were confirmed yesterday as Influenza A or the H5N1 strain, the same virus found in sick chickens in the south of that country, the WHO said.

The same strain of bird flu killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997, when more than a million chickens and ducks were culled.

Health officials say they believe there is no danger from eating the properly cooked meat or eggs of affected chickens. Still, governments and businesses in the region were scrambling to bolster consumer confidence in their poultry industries.

The disease is spreading fast among poultry in Vietnam, where more than a million chickens have died in the latest outbreak, and farmers have been ordered to destroy all sick birds.

An outbreak last month in South Korea led to the slaughter of 1.1 million chickens and ducks in an attempt to contain the disease.

In Japan, officials said 10,000 chickens had died from the bird flu and thousands more would be slaughtered.

In Thailand, farmers alleged that the government was trying to hide a bird flu outbreak, which they claim has killed thousands of chickens in central provinces. But a livestock official said tests showed that some chickens had fowl cholera, but that there was no evidence of bird flu.